The untold origin story of eBay that I lived (2018)
1–10 of 61 posts
Re: The untold origin story of eBay that I lived (2018)
#2Actual (and better, IMHO,) title:
> The untold origin story of eBay that I lived...
Re: The untold origin story of eBay that I lived (2018)
#3I thought the guy built it for his wife to sell pez dispensers? I seem to remember hearing that 20 years ago.
Re: The untold origin story of eBay that I lived (2018)
#4I thought the guy built it for his wife to sell pez dispensers? I seem to remember hearing that 20 years ago.
Hahaha, that story really caught on but Pierre confessed it was made up for the purpose of getting people to relate to eBay. Netflix's story about late fees was same.
Re: The untold origin story of eBay that I lived (2018)
#5Actual (and better, IMHO,) title: > The untold origin story of eBay that I lived...
> In 1995 the ebola virus had its second major outbreak, 19 years from its first, and I discovered a fascinating website about it called eBay.
I think the original title is much more interesting and also correct.
Re: The untold origin story of eBay that I lived (2018)
#6Actual (and better, IMHO,) title: > The untold origin story of eBay that I lived...
We've reverted the title. Submitters: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
(Submitted title was "The untold origin story of eBay and Ebola that I lived...")
Re: The untold origin story of eBay that I lived (2018)
#7"In 1995 the ebola virus had its second major outbreak, 19 years from its first, and I discovered a fascinating website about it called eBay. It turns out Pierre owned it and wrote the ebola information. The traffic it drew would help his new auction site get off the ground."
wow. Seems relevant today.
Re: The untold origin story of eBay that I lived (2018)
#8I liked the original title of the story for what it is worth.
As Chris MacAskill wrote:
In 1995 the ebola virus had its second major outbreak, 19 years from its first, and I discovered a fascinating website about it called eBay. It turns out Pierre owned it and wrote the ebola information. The traffic it drew would help his new auction site get off the ground.
Re: The untold origin story of eBay that I lived (2018)
#9I thought the guy built it for his wife to sell pez dispensers? I seem to remember hearing that 20 years ago.
I was a tiny tiny competitor to eBay some 20 years ago and the pez story was pure BS.
The reality is that eBay (that is AuctionWeb) got its initial traction from spamming Usenet as the story correctly states.
Very quickly they moved from spamming themselves to letting their users spam Usenet.
This is the "growth hacking" model still followed today by many. The question is there any moral middle ground?
If you can search Usenet archives you can find remnants of that AuctionWeb spam and people complaining. Soon others tried to copy them but it was too late.
This was in mid 90s after the first mass spam from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Canter_and_Martha_Sie... .
Re: The untold origin story of eBay that I lived (2018)
#10It’s funny how Amazon feared eBay, and then failed to beat them — in 1999.
But when I worked at eBay in 2003, they had the mailroom put a sticker on every amazon box that said “Next time get it on eBay!”
And now the tide is swinging back a bit as people get fed up with fakes and commingling at Amazon. At least with eBay you know the product you’re getting is actually from the seller you bought it from.