posted on July 4, 2001 05:41:29 PM new
(reposted with permission)
July 4th, 2001 - The Day a Flea Bit eBay
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eBay was bitten by a flea today and I doubt it even noticed.
EBay should, because that flea or the next one or the next one will change it's direction forever. And for the better.
One or all of these flea bites will make eBay very sick. And as life crisis have a way of doing, eBay will re-evaluate what led up to this happening and change how it deals with it's customers.
That will assure that eBay not only continues as a dominate force in the online marketplace for generations to come but that it will regain it's leadership in providing opportunity and empowerment to people worldwide.
Today's bite came from a new site named Internet Pioneers, launched live on July 4th, 2001 and designed to be the first general purpose member owned co-op venue.
It was a very small bite. When I started listing this morning the total auction count was 23. Some people buy more on eBay in one day than all the auctions listed at Internet Pioneers.
Yes, and many years ago the first non-Native American moved to Calif.
I've listed a series of auctions on eBay in rather rapid sequence and seen the count jump by hundreds and even thousands between each of my insertions. Today I watched as one or two other auctions appeared and felt much greater satisfaction. Like hearing the ax or seeing the smoke of a distant neighbor in the wilderness.
We Americans celebrate Independence Day today. A time in the past when the forefathers of this country separated from their homeland, broke ties with relatives and friends, put their families and possessions in jeopardy and even risked their lives.
Today I could join in by being independent, making and not just celebrating history, and continuing the opportunity they provided. And all it cost me was a few minutes of my time.
Well, it's time to put on red, white and blue, wave a flag, watch a parade, eat too many hot dogs and again be awed by fireworks.
I feel more connected to my history today than ever before.
I hope you to find a way to experience that emotion.
posted on July 4, 2001 07:44:26 PM new
Sorry, but this site's software is pathetic. While the co-op concept is very glamorous, this is certainly not going to work. If all 70 members were browsing at the same time, the site would crash incessantly.
Dimview, the sell through here may be more in your league. I doubt the denominator in your equation will ever pass 500.
posted on July 4, 2001 07:51:50 PM new
The lack of Replys to this thread has to to do with a few Things One the holiday many are out this after noon and this evening but also like me and many other we were busy posting auctions and helping with last min testing.
its one thing to talk (Auction sellers in a cooperative effort) it's very much another to actually be Writeing testing software and cooperatively haveing a live site up and running.
Many hours of work and answering message board question answering many endless emails with requests and Idea's for site features, 8 to 20 hours work in a day adding features to scripts only to have them break or effect other features in a negitive way only to have to start over the next day.
Trying to track down open source scripts and addons,and there programers on message boards and with email trying to get tips help and advice for installing there addons.
dealing with other legal and technical dificults and provideing support for some Registered users who are not use to posting Auctions directly at the auction site and how to add urls for remotely hosted pictures.
For all The Effort in spite of the lack of responce to this thread there are nearly 90 registered user in the first 23 hour after opening there was little to no promoteing as of today I dont think we did to awfull bad.
everyone out enjoying this day earned the break.....
posted on July 4, 2001 08:31:01 PM new
I wrote the original post and entered it on the eBay forum.
After awhile the thread was closed by the moderator with the following post
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"Everyone,
I'm sorry, but this thread does not concern eBay and I'm going to have to lock it up.
If you wish to discuss Internet Pioneers, please start a thread in the Other Online Auctions Forum.
Thanks for your cooperation.
Pat
[email protected]
*********************************************
After checking with AW I got permission to start it again here. As double posting (two identical posts in different forums) is frowned on I wanted to let everyone know that I had received permission.
posted on July 4, 2001 09:14:45 PM new
Thanks for clearing that up, Ray.
I guess the real excitement comes on Christmas morning when the flea decamps from Valley Forge and stages a sneak attack on eBay's troops in Trenton.
-gaffan-
posted on July 4, 2001 10:05:35 PM new
Just a minor correction:
I guess the real excitement comes on Christmas morning when the flea decamps from Washington Crossing and stages a sneak attack on eBay's troops in Trenton.
posted on July 5, 2001 01:31:53 AM new
Hi, all. Thanks for your interest and kind words. We did see a flurry of activity early in the day. Things quieted down in the evening as I'm sure everyone was out with their families.
Dimview, the sell through here may be more in your league.
Well, let me take out my old abacus.... 90 auctions, five with bids. I guess that TOPS those other sites, doesn't it? LOL! Does that mean we are a contender? I don't know, but personally I was very enthused and even surprised at the support we received. This is not Washington crossing the Delaware. It is Joshua at the battle of Jericho. At any rate, the response was much better than I expected, and even with a minor bug detected, I think we did very well. Congratulations, everyone, on a job well done.
I think there has been some misunderstanding regarding our purpose so I'd like to take a moment to clarify.
The point I would like to emphasize is that although Internet Pioneers is a free auction site, its purpose is not to provide a free ride to the online auction community. Our goal is to create a co-op. It would be naive to think that the success of Internet Pioneers is not tied to the success of the free auction site. But let me clarify the way I see it. Internet Pioneers is a meeting place where sellers can discuss and plan building a co-op. The auction site is of secondary importance.
I'm sure that the site will in fact serve as a model for the co-op. However, when a co-op is established, it will be located elsewhere (have its own domain name) and it will not be free. At a minimum, there will be membership dues, and other co-op responsibilities. However, we do have a working model to play with and that offers some advantages. For example, we can poll our users so they become comfortable with one member, one vote. We can also use the site to offer educational (co-op) materials.
It may seem like I'm splitting hairs. Internet Pioneers is really a way to sell users on the idea of cooperation. The site as you see it (a free site) is not the end goal. Neither I, nor anyone else, will invest their time and money, simply to hand sellers a free site on a silver platter. But before we can build a co-op, we need to educate our members as to why this is a good idea, show them how a co-op works, and hopefully demonstrate the power we have when working together as a team.
. Internet Pioneers
posted on July 5, 2001 04:20:42 AM new
twinsoft >
Well, let me take out my old abacus.... 90 auctions, five with bids. I guess that TOPS those other sites,
No auctions have closed yet, but that leads me to ask whether there will be a daily (maybe weekly to start) sales history like ePier, or a link to the actual closed auctions that would make calculating a sell-through rate accurate.
posted on July 5, 2001 10:11:11 AM new
You've got to be kidding me! A flea bit eBay? If you could find the smallest insect in the world to bite the largest animal in the world, it still would not compare. Get real!
posted on July 5, 2001 12:34:42 PM new
balmonte, that's not even the most extreme example of metaphor impairment demonstrated thus far. In another thread, the act of setting up an off-the-shelf package of auction scripts is compared favorably to the guy standing in front of the tank at Tienanmen Square. That's so far over the top I hope they've got some oxygen and a pressure suit.
-gaffan-
posted on July 5, 2001 01:10:18 PM new
Dimview, I don't think there is any way to track the statistics you suggest. Sorry about that.
There has been some criticism of the software we are using. Folks, this is a free software program running on a free server. Some have suggested it won't handle 100, 1000 or 10,000 users. We don't know, but we registered 70 users and listed 100 auctions yesterday without a problem (other than a couple of programming errors on my part).
If our membership grows to the point where the software is really burdened, then we can consider an upgrade - if that is necessary. We now have 100 registered users. If we have 1,000 or 10,000 users and we need to upgrade, we can run a donation drive, everybody chips in a buck, and we buy a commercial package. That is no big deal. There's no reason to put the cart before the horse.
One more thing about the software. EveryAuction is open source and has been around since 1997. It has been thoroughly tested and many people are both using the software and tending the code. In my opinion, it is a darned good piece of programming. I don't really know what its limits are, but if we ever need to upgrade, I will suggest we go right back to EverySoft and ask them to build us a custom app. The resources are there and we should take advantage of them. Buying a commercial software package "off the shelf" might be a foolish and costly mistake. In the meantime, I will poke around the EveryAuction support board and see if anyone can shed some light.
Opening day was a big success, much bigger than I expected, and perhaps this means online auction sellers are really ready for an alternative to eBay. Thanks to everyone who participated!
I'd also like to thank AuctionBytes for their kind NewFlash! article today. Thanks guys!
. Internet Pioneers
posted on July 5, 2001 02:56:30 PM new
This might sound stupid, but has anyone thought of buying what is left of Gold's, seemed that thier software package could handle a couple of 100,000 auctions, and you would have the user data base. I would guess, that, you could pick up whats left for pennies on the dollar. Ed
edhdsn
posted on July 5, 2001 04:39:25 PM new
Someone already picked up Gold's old software and user base. Check out http://www.sellyouritem.com
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posted on July 6, 2001 02:40:56 PM new
I think we should focus on the co-operative, like Twinsoft is pointing out.
All of US are the ones who built Ebay. Yes, they had the idea first. Yes, they have the user base- right now. But, the bottom line is, we- the users- are the ones with the real power. How much longer do YOU want to support ebay's stockholders?
No company is invicible. Ebay certainly isn't.
The biggest problem is that right now auction sellers are a lot like the Native Americans were when the white people first came to this country. If the Native Americans had banded together they could have easily kicked the invaders right on outta here. But they didn't- they were too busy fighting amongst themselves to organize...and look what happened to them. OK so maybe it's not a wonderful analogy but there really is strength in numbers, and co-operating is probably the only thing that will get us anywhere.
WHERE the co-operative is, isn't much of an issue. Right now, with 140-something auctions, we don't NEED a huge fancy site with all the bells and whistles. When the time comes to get one, we will. What we need to do right now is focus on building the co-operative, like Twin said.
posted on July 6, 2001 03:59:16 PM new
Hi, CAgrrl. Thanks for that.
I checked on EA's support board. The first response I received said that EveryAuction will support about 1000 users on a busy site. The suggestion was to use a database-driven backend. (No, I have no idea what that means, either!) But Everysoft does offer a (free) database auction script that can handle many more users. If we need to, we can figure out how to use it.
The second response I received was a suggestion to try the free "FastEA" addon script, which the programmer says will handle 250,000 items and run faster than eBay. We can add that script pretty easily, I think, and integrate it into the script we have now. So I don't expect we will break down from too many user/listings any time soon.
Once a co-op is formed, and we have some money to play with, if we need a custom app I would suggest we go back to Everysoft and ask them to build us an app. That may not be necessary unless we are HUGE. In the meantime, Internet Pioneers and the free auction site will be a model for co-op planning, and since it's free we'll have to work with what we have. I am working on improvements, including support for Dutch auctions, but I believe the real effort should be in organizing members and building a co-op. The real challenge will be working together cooperatively on a large scale.
One of the questions we're facing now is whether the co-op will be located at Internet Pioneers, or will form elsewhere. Keep in mind Dman's suggestion that we run the servers off our own (home) computers. (That is a low-cost/no-cost solution that would be very stable.) I would like to keep Internet Pioneers as a free educational and planning site, though we might replace IP with the co-op, and offer non-members limited benefits. This is something we will need to discuss. If you have any suggestions, please share your ideas.
. Internet Pioneers
