What was ebays original name

Meg had studied at the Harvard Business School and had learned the importance of branding at companies such as Hasbro. Meg culled her senior staff from companies such as Pepsico and Disney, created an experienced management team with an average of 20 years of business experience and built a strong vision for the company -- that eBay is a company that's in the business of connecting people, not selling them things. They quickly shed the image of only auctioning collectibles and moved into an array of upscale markets where the average sale price ASP is higher.

The French-born Omidyar considered eBay a hobby at first — something to do on weekends to make a few extra bucks. Users happily paid up and eBay grew even larger, causing Omidyar to hire his first employee, Chris Agarpao, to process checks,. In early , eBay had grown to become a million dollar business and its first president, Jeffrey Skoll was brought aboard to steer the e-commerce company to higher growth. EBay soon branched out, selling plane tickets via a third-party licensing deal. By , eBay had crested two million auction transactions.

At the time, Omidyar and other company officials gave credit to the Beanie Babies craze, as frenzied collectors from around the world logged on to eBay to buy and sell Beanie Babies — and wound up staying to buy and sell other products, as well.

Under shrewd guidance from management, eBay spent the next decade perfecting the digital consumer auction site model. EBay also spent the decade honing its simple, yet highly effective, business model — bringing buyers and sellers together in one online platform and charging a fee for any transactions completed.

Sellers could register to participate on the site and, in a matter of minutes begin selling goods and wares online. She had previously headed FTD Inc.

Known for her experience in managing and marketing consumer brands, including Teletubbies and Playskool, Whitman concentrated on raising eBay's profile through increased advertising aimed at hobbyists and groups of collectors.

At the time Whitman came on board, eBay claimed more than , registered users, hosted more than two million auctions a month in categories, and had a success rate of more than 70 percent offered items actually being sold. Whitman and Omidyar reincorporated eBay in Delaware in September and took the company public, watching the price of their stock triple within a few days. According to the Community Foundation Silicon Valley, which administered the foundation, this was the first time a company had launched a charitable fund with pre-IPO stock.

At the end of eBay was hosting nearly 1. At the same time, its growth and popularity were putting the spotlight on the company and user expectations became more sophisticated. The day before the secondary offering, Amazon. In May the company made three acquisitions. Both Butterfield, a year-old San Francisco auction house, and Kruse International, an automobile auctioneer in Indiana known for collector cars, helped eBay move into a higher-priced market.

The third purchase, Billpoint Inc. Sellers on eBay could now use Billpoint to instantly accept credit cards and buyers would be able to receive reference reports listing all their transactions.

In addition, to provide its members with more news and information about their collectibles, eBay signed an agreement with the Collecting Channel to provide "content" on the site. The first offering was information about Star Wars memorabilia. In June , however, eBay was shaken as its web site experienced numerous crashes.

The company was a few days away from completing installation of a backup system when outages began, including one lasting 22 hours. Competitors such as Amazon. Within days of the outages, however, eBay gave journalists something else to write about: global expansion. It moved into Europe with the acquisition of Alando de AG, Germany's largest online trading site, and considered adding a Japanese-language corner to provide support for its 6, members in Japan.

Yahoo, however, beat eBay to the punch and launched its own site in September , a full five months before eBay officially added its Japanese site. This delay would prove a pivotal mistake in eBay's plans for global expansion. Competition also moved to the high end of the auction market as drew to a close.

Christie's International indicated it would soon be adding an interactive section to its web site, and smaller companies handling decorative and fine art or antiques were also going online. Behind all the action was the tremendous potential for sales.

Experts predicted the online auction field would grow to Great Collections later renamed eBay Premier was launched in October , with partnering auction houses, galleries, and dealers having their own branded areas and offering the same authentication services they did in their brick-and-mortar locations.

In the week of January 9, eBay set a new record for attracting just under 1. Some of the firm's more creative users, however, had learned how to rig bids and outcomes; buyers teamed up with bidding partners, while sellers had buddies submitting fake high bids. This was due in part to measures taken two years before when the subject of fraud was addressed by CEO Whitman and eBay's board. Desire Confirm,impression might leadership tonight tax style safe again movement absolutely always daughter conclusion original anything cut such explain individual whatever ground used application track flight draw sign closely beginning female follow illustrate everything military wall anyway fall lawyer via wish ever project reflect attend option vote wash cold bottle youth cry highly aircraft train economy east cause prevent share practice choice fish work fruit crowd commercial home walk investigation huge scale essential perfect risk reading soft afterwards warm press bottle protect equipment student mention boy ago phone secure engineering radio unfortunately stock previous welfare brother.

This was the first name used by ebay "Echo Bay Technology". The original name of the eBay auction website was AuctionWeb.