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Still, today eBay is one of the most dazzling sites on the Internet. Log on and feast your eyes on a global garage sale that includes--well, just about any inanimate object you've ever seen, heard of or lusted after. That Partridge Family lunch box that made you feel like the Man in third grade? The bidding starts at $5. That Art Deco clock you always wanted? There were recently 19 of them being auctioned on eBay. Sure there's kitsch (Elvis snow globes, anyone?), and a scary number of Beanie Babies. But there's also luxe (usually a few Rolls-Royces are going at any given moment). Poke around and you'll come across the impressively old (dinosaur teeth!), the bizarrely new (who really needs to bid on last month's TV Guide?) and the just plain weird (anyone for a metal BEWARE OF ATTACK RATS sign?). And you will find thriving subcultures that collect things you didn't know anyone bothered to collect. Really, people: antique waffle irons?
eBay is also one of the Internet's greatest financial success stories. It has defied the 11th Commandment: Internet Start-Ups Shall Bleed Red Ink. It's made money from its first month of operation. After only four years, eBay is worth some $20 billion--more than Sears and J.C. Penney combined--and its stock price has surged 25-fold. The rewards for the key players have been lavish. Whitman, after less than two years at the company, controls shares worth about $1 billion. Skoll's net worth is more than $3 billion. Omidyar's 30% ownership adds up to more than $5 billion.
Why has eBay succeeded so wildly? A big factor is that eBay was first on the block, locking in buyers and sellers early. The more people flocked to eBay, the more it became the place to be. But the real genius of eBay is its success in building a community--"maybe the most real community on the entire Web," says Whitman. There's no question people like hanging out in eBayland. The site gets more than 1.5 billion page visits a month. And at a time when the Internet mantra is "stickiness"--how long users stay on a website--eBay is cyberspace superglue. Each visitor to Amazon.com spends an average of 13 min. a month on the site. On eBay, each visitor's monthly average is about 1 hr. 45 min.
eBay--and the online-auction phenomenon it has spawned--is redrawing America's business landscape. There's scarcely a company in America that won't be affected by the new rules of commercial engagement. "Every week someone will come up to you and say this has changed my business entirely, and you can fill in the blank for what business," says eBay vice president of marketing and business development Steve Westly. "A guy came up to me at the National Auctioneers Association and said, 'I'm in the bull-semen business, and eBay's completely changed the access I have to bull semen.'"