Consider this a math/strategy/social problem, possibly tougher than any game of chess.<p>Basically, eBay has a monopoly and they are abusing that fact. Is it possible to neutralize the network effects that protect them?<p>If any group can come up with a viable strategy, why not news.yc?
You're looking for another, larger dinosaur to come along and eat ebay. Instead what is likely to happen is many smaller mammals like cragslist and <a href="http://www.etsy.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.etsy.com/</a> will come along and slowly make it irrelevant.<p>They are certainly speeding the process along with their mistreatment of the most important kinds of sellers and allowing the rampant spam and fraud that has nearly taken over whole sections.<p>When ebay began the web was a very different place. The rise of social networking and basic online shopping awareness will allow smaller niche markets like etsy to flourish. A reputation system that is portable, secure and inter-operates easily would be a big plus in this direction but I think it will happen even without it being fully developed.<p>I can't wait for an online market of makers that can offer unique, one-off technology products. I'd gladly trade in my Ipod for a funky handmade OS Ogg player that did more of what I want and less of what Apple wants. Reputation built by how many cool things you've made, commissioned items.. Hey there's a startup in there somewhere!
If you want to be the next eBay you need to be radically different from the current one. You can't just one-up them.<p>One thing I've been thinking about is using double-sided auctions instead of the typical second-price English auction you find at eBay. The idea is that buyers leave bids and sellers leave offers for a particular item class, rather than for a particular item "instance". For each class of item (e.g., 2GB iPod nano) you would essentially have a market similar to the stock market. You can leave an offer or a bid or you can act on a bid or an offer that is already left by somebody else.<p>This will be a much more efficient market than eBay, so the forces of supply and demand will be stronger. Buyers will be able to choose between speed of sale and profit. On average, buyers will have less of an advantage against sellers - things will be more balanced.<p>Overall, this greatly decreases the transaction cost, which is the cost of the time and effort to research the item, determine the veracity of the listing, and devise a bidding strategy. In a way, the market has already done the research for you.<p>In addition, it removes the wait until the auction expires. If I want to buy an iPod for $200 and you want to sell it for $200 we can close the transaction immediately.<p>The market principle won't be so strong with rarer items, but people will be able to show demand for rare items before sellers list them.<p>The major problem is the adequate clustering of similar offers (e.g., all 2GB iPod Nanos). It needs to be done automatically, so this idea becomes to eBay what Powerset is to Google.
The problem, of course, is inertia. Everybody hates ebay, but they have the buyers, the sellers, and the feedback data.<p>If I were trying to beat ebay, first I'd separate feedback into another application. Why should you need separate feedback for ebay, amazon, and other sites? It should all just be one reputation score, which lets people know whether you're an honest buyer/seller or a crook. You could import existing feedback from existing sites.<p>Second, I'd come up with an app that would allow users to search for items not just at ebay but at other sites too, in the hopes of attracting users, given that they would have little reason to help bootstrap a new auction site that has neither buyers nor sellers.<p>Third, I'd write an auctomatic-like app for sellers that would have a superior interface for them to list items at ebay and other sites (Amazon purposely gives sellers inferior tools for listing items unless they pay $40 to become a power seller).<p>If all goes well, I would now have buyers and sellers visiting the site. Next, I would start hosting auctions myself, which would optionally automatically be listed if a seller listed an item at another site. My fees would be quite a bit lower than ebay's or amazon's and scammers would not be tolerated.<p>Of course, this is all easier said than done... I guess there's a reason ebay remains dominant after a decade of craptacular service.
The problem is two-fold: a new site can't attract sellers because there are no buyers, and it can't attract buyers because there are no sellers.<p>If the sellers come I think the buyers will come. Here's a potentially useful question: how can a site be made that is hassle free for sellers and also eliminates the risks associated with an initial lack of buyers? This may be easier to do for "Buy it now" sellers than for auction sellers.
The thing is the online auction market has to have a monopoly. Why would a seller want to sell his item on a site that won't give him the most bidders?<p>So honestly I don't think anyone can take eBay down. Even if Craigslist/Google/Microsoft comes out with a free version.<p>So unless you want to get government involved I wouldn't bother
The problem is you're looking at a generic competitor to eBay while the real opportunity is niche auctions. There's a lot of stuff sold on eBay just because it's the default site. e.g., I would love to see a competitive online auction site for used & new machine tools that could do a better job in this area.
To my knowledge, I believe the biggest deterrent to an online competitor is the patent itself that ebay is in control of regarding online auctions. Maybe the method that the auctions are controlled by could be the route taken, but for the most part I think they have their sector of the market cornered.
honestly, it really amazes me no one in web 2 has come up with a recognized ebay competitor:<p>google => powerset,mahalo
msft => zoho (they're full of fail, but still)
I think in this kind of situation, the monopoly is so entrenched other entrants can only have a shot if the rules of the game change significantly or if ebay makes a really major mistake that makes sellers leave en masse.