The whole tech culture is also to blame. I'm sure there have been a LOT of great alternate ebay, paypal start ups who just didn't get traction. Bloggers won't talk about you if you haven't raised a million and you won't get much traction on google without bloggers or spending major bucks. My Dreamybids.com site for example, is an awesome service that uses the quibids model. It allows anyone to host their own auctions…
That doesn't seem like an auction and to be honest I don't really like the idea either.