William:
If history is any example, eBay has grown about as much during the summer as it has the rest of the year, except for the first quarter, which is always much stronger.
For example, in 1998, the following growth rates took place (caleandar quarters, sequential growth):
Q1 - 125 percent
Q2 - 50 percent
Q3 - 50 percent
Q4 - 50 percent
As we know for this year, so far:
Q1 - 70 percent
Q2 - 25 to 30 percent (not counting outage refunds)
Now, if this summer quarter can't come in with at least 20 percent, then eBay has a pretty big problem, and they are OK if they can come in between 25 and 30 percent over Q2.
The interesting thing is that Yahoo auction counts are continuing to grow quickly -- in fact, over the past few weeks, Yahoo has added more auctions than eBay has (and I don't mean percentages, where they have been blowing eBay away).
I certainly don't feel eBay is being NEARLY aggressive enough -- if Jeff Bezos had eBay, he would be doing so many more things with it.
Where all all the local auctions? eBay introduced eBay LA six months ago, and nothing more in the US since then. Does that mean eBay LA hasn't fulfilled expectations?
As far as reliability: there is yet another "emergency" outage going on as I write.
eBay says that a hardware component failed, but that it did not affect the site's performance because of a redundant component. That's great, except they go on to say that they need to shut down for three hours to replace the component.
Well, that is NOT redundancy -- they should have been able to replace the part, with the other performing its function until the first is replaced. Only then would it be truly redundant.
I agree with you that the sky is the limit for eBay, but they can't just sit on their butts and expect the sky to come to them. |
