RunningWithBulls.com - The curse of Sanfermin

The Economist are running an article (unfortunately prime content, so you need a subscription) about this years 10th birthday of ebay.

They give some valuable lessons to be learnt from ebays success in weathering the DotCom disaster.

With respect to Irish DotComs, some that are coming to the 10 year old stage, what can be said about them? Do they understand that the user is king? If they start changingthe way they operate, against the users wishes, will they die a quick death, when a new giantkiller arrives on the scene?

I suppose more to the point, what are they Irish DotComs? Are they just Irish orientated, or do they spread their web further?

*“Generally in a company the employees know the most about the business. In eBay, our community knows more than we do,” Bill Cobb adds. Ms Whitman concurs: “We make a small number of rules and get the heck out of the way, because the entrepreneurial talents of our users will solve a lot of the problems.”
*to succeed, firms need agility, an open mind and the ability to reinvent themselves repeatedly.
*they need to listen carefully to their customers, paying close attention to what they do and don’t want
*just keeping track of your existing rivals is not enough
*the behaviour of many consumers is constantly changing as well, as individuals discover new ways to shop and interact with each other via the web
*to flourish these firms have had to remake their businesses over and over again
*Driving the strategy of all these firms is the shifting behaviour of consumers. eBay’s business, in particular, has been moulded by its users

[as an example of this, the article states, “second-hand cars now account for 30% of sales on its sites, something that managers never expected. They discovered that it was possible to sell cars on their site only when customers started listing them on the section for toy cars.”]

* eBay’s managers admit that customers are shaping its business more than they are, and seem acutely aware that groups of customers could easily depart together to set up their own specialist auction or sales sites if eBay charges too much for its services or lets them down.
*the prizes offered by the internet are dazzling by any measure, but only those who can satisfy the demanding and changing tastes of consumers, the internet’s true sovereigns, will survive to enjoy them

I eventually found a blog, authored by Pierre Omidyar, founder of ebay