Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : eBay - Superb Internet Business Model -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tom Markowski who wrote (5680)	9/30/1999 12:10:00 AM
From: Tom Markowski	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 7772

From Briefing.com 10:44 ET ****** Amazon.com (AMZN) 74 15/16 +9 1/16: This is the first really good idea coming out of Amazon.com in a long time: renting space to other merchants. Briefing.com always loved the fact that they established themselves as "internet books" very well early on, but the later moves into broad shopping seemed unfocused. But this idea may serve to really make Amazon.com mean "shopping on the internet." Instead of selling the items themselves, Amazon.com will simply rent the space out to other merchants, who list their own items. Amazon.com will charge them an incredibly low $9.95 per month to list as many as 3,000 items, with an as-yet unspecified percentage for processing the transaction. It comes a lot closer to making Amazon.com a true mall. Who gets hurt by this? First of all, eBay (EBAY), who has many businesses paying both listing fees and percentage. Secondly, Inktomi (INKT) stands to lose, perhaps in a big way. Inktomi had been offering its ecommerce engine for a remarkable 7% of revenue, to any merchant that wanted a private label ecommerce engine. Also hurt, although they were hurting to begin with, CyberCash (CYCH). Amazon.com's mall will allow users to enter their credit card and personal information once, at Amazon.com, and shop at all the merchant sites. This was the main benefit of CyberCash's InstaBuy product. Merchants who sign up with Amazon.com won't need to buy InstaBuy now. Amazon.com now offers both the transaction capability, and some brand name traffic. On first glance, it is incredibly positive. Amazon.com's vision always was to provide everything for sale over the net. That's what the name Amazon means: a river of distribution, largest in the world. Of course, all of this thinking is predicated on the fact that merchants will indeed sign up, a conclusion that everyone has already assumed is a certainty. - RVG

To: Tom Markowski who wrote (5680)	9/30/1999 8:44:00 PM
From: LTK007	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 7772

EBAY just filed an S-3 it appears Butterfield&Butterfield,Kruse and alando have been free to unload since 9/28 also this little scary bits from many <<We are investing heavily in marketing and promotion, customer support, further development of our website, technology and operating infrastructure development. We have significant ongoing commitments in some of these areas. As a result, we may be unable to adjust our spending rapidly enough to compensate for any unexpected revenue shortfall, which may harm our profitability. The emergence of competitors, many of whom are offering free auctions to users, limits our ability to raise user fees in response to declines in profitability. In addition, we are spending in advance of anticipated growth, which may also harm our profitability. Our historic growth rates are not sustainable and we expect in the near term that our costs, particularly those related to site operations, customer support, other infrastructure and our international, regional and premium initiatives, will increase substantially. In view of the rapidly evolving nature of our business and our limited operating history, we believe that period-to-period comparisons of our operating results are not necessarily meaningful. You should not rely upon our historical results as indications of our future performance.>> Max90

To: Tom Markowski who wrote (5680)	10/1/1999 8:12:00 AM
From: mrknowitall	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 7772

Tom - ebay's listing charges are $.25 to a maximum of $2.00 for most items, not "$2-3" as you indicated. The power of FREE is mitigated by the fact that in commerce as well as life, you usually get what you pay for. The biggest threat to ebay, IMO, is Amazon's new expanded scope and it will undoubtedly increase with their new credit-card acceptance program. Surely, some shoppers will gravitate toward what is the rough equivalent of a giant mall with an auction-house in it. I believe ebay was too slow to respond to their mounting technical problems and has not taken the steps necessary to maintain dominance, but their competitors are going to have to have deep pockets over a fairly long time in order to make themselves viable. With Amazon's recent actions, I expect consolidation among them and the end of some of them as we know them now. I completely agree that there can be no doubling or quadrupling of ebay's revenues - I've noted before there are natural limitations to the numbers of persons who will, let alone can, participate in auctions over the internet. Mr. K.