The end of the year is always good for a bunch of retrospective articles and we here at AuctionInsights aren’t above jumping on the bandwagon when it comes to story ideas. Created over the Labor Day weekend in 1995, eBay has certainly grown, and changed significantly over the past twelve years. Time does fly, especially in the online world, so if you’ve been using eBay for a while (or if its been a while since you’ve used eBay), you may benefit from the handy AuctionInsights guide to recognizing eBay veterans.
Top Ten Signs That You’ve Been Using eBay For a Long Time
1. You remember when BIN was just a container
- eBay introduced the fixed-price Buy-It-Now (BIN) feature in 1999.
2. You remember when eBay auctions involved mailing checks and waiting for them to clear.
- Online payment systems such as PayPal didn’t become popular until 2000.
3. You remember when eBay was directly competing with PayPal with their BillPoint online payments system.
- eBay gave up on BillPoint and bought PayPal for 1.5 billion dollars in July 2002.
4. You remember when you needed to host your own eBay photos or employ a separate image hosting service.
- eBay introduced their eBay Picture Services in 2000 and allowed users to upload and host one picture for free and more for an additional fee.
5. You remember when you didn’t have to buy or sell anything on eBay to actually leave a feedback on another member.
- When the feedback system first started, you could actually leave a positive or negative feedback on someone just because you liked (or didn’t like) a comment they left on the message boards!
6. You remember when you could go to Yahoo! Auctions and make a sale.
- Anybody remember Yahoo! Auctions?
7. You remember when you had to take pictures with your film camera, have them developed, and then scan them in order to get a digital picture.
- Aren’t digital cameras great?
8. You remember when eBay was called AuctionWeb.
- Started in in 1995 on a sub domain of the Echo Bay consulting firm website, AuctionWeb subsumed Echo Bay and became eBay in 1997.
9. You remember when the market for Beanie Babies on eBay exceeded a half a million dollars (1997).
- I still have a hundred of those things cluttering up the house!
10. You remember when the U.S. site was the only eBay site on the internet.
- eBay first expanded internationally in 1999 with markets in the UK, Germany, and Australia. eBay now has separate websites for 38 international markets.
What do you remember about eBay and the online auction industry? Share your thoughts in the comments.
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