If projections hold true, this may be the first year that eBay generates more revenue from fixed-price sales than from auctions. Nicholas Carr has an interesting post today about the decline of the online auction site:
We already know that the famously cute story of eBay’s origin – founder Pierre Omidyar launched the site to help his fiancee trade the PEZ dispensers she collected – was a lie cooked up by a PR operative. We also know that the company’s vaunted “reputation system” – the foundation of what has long been perceived as a radically new kind of self-organizing and self-policing commercial community – has been crumbling.
Now we’re beginning to find out that eBay’s seemingly revolutionary core – the online auction – may have been a fad all along. As Business Week reports, eBay’s auctions are “a dying breed.” Buyers and sellers are reverting to the traditional retailing model of fixed prices
Read more at roughtype.com.
