Rating: 
Summary: A must read for eBayers or Internet Entrepreneurs
Review: I would recommend this book to anyone who trades on eBay or who is interested in how eBay became and remains so successful. A very entertaining and educational book. I would also recommend this book to anyone interested in doing business on the Internet. The principles that eBay used to be successful from day one would apply to any on-line business. A must for your business library.
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Summary: Ebusiness and the value of virtual community
Review: The author's book "The Perfect Store" provides a historical journey of the rise of eBay. In particular two themes are explored: the gradual rise of the eBay business model and the deep vibrant virtual community, which the company deliberately established. Cohen begins the story of eBay with a look at the founder who is called Pierre Omidyar. This provides a good starting point because eBay's attributes are really those of its founder. Initially the company was called "Auctionweb" and the first item, which was sold on the web site, was a broken laser pointer, which reached a bid of 14 Dollars (for an item basically worth nothing). Omidyar's interest in virtual community originated from using Usenet newsgroups where users would have long rambling discussions. However, his own values provided the basis for eBay's use of virtual community. In particular Omidyar's belief that: "people are basically good and when given the chance to do good they will". Moreover, his philosophy that community and commerce are interlinked provides the foundation stone to understand the success of eBay. The idea is that commerce and civilisation have always developed together and that the first markets were based at crossroads. The crossroads became a city where many people would interact, socialise and engage in commerce. Omidyar's vision was that eBay would be both a commercial crossroad and a community. Where nearly all e-business books focus on the eBay business model as being the reason for the company's success, they miss entirely the importance of virtual community at the company. In Omidyar's original vision both the business model (commerce) and the virtual community were (and still are) of equal importance. For some reason the importance of virtual community at eBay has been ignored by business publications. However, to put this into perspective, even eBay's own managers and personnel didn't understand the value of virtual community when they entered the company. In 1997 3 new Stanford MBA's began work at eBay in the area of marketing and business development. They looked at how the business worked (in particular the concept of being an infomediary with no stock) and examined the business model from the perspective of cash flow and click through rates. Afterwards the first thing they questioned was why "the community thing was so important - they didn't buy into it at all". Therefore, virtual community is something, which the business community doesn't understand. This may be because it needs to be experienced in order to understand the usefulness of the medium. The use of virtual community at eBay is partially also the result of purely practical reasons. In the first years of eBay it was not possible for Omidyar to solve all users problems. As a result users were encouraged to solve each other's problems through the use of a message board, which enabled information to be shared. Users became more self-sufficient and required less help from Omidyar, which in turn allowed him to focus on other tasks. These community features were already introduced in the first year (1995) of eBay's existence. Later in 1996 Omidyar introduced another community-based feature called the "Feedback Forum". Again the aim was for users to resolve their differences with one another. In particular when disputes arose in a transaction or in the bidding process. The ethical guidelines for the eBay community to follow were that "people are generally good", "people should treat others the way they wished to be treated" and "in a dispute give the other the benefit of the doubt". These guidelines mirrored the founder's own attributes. The feedback forum was a new community feature, which allowed eBay users to give criticism or praise to another user. It was designed to expose the dishonest eBay users to all others in the community and "drive them away by giving criticism". The feedback forum worked by allowing users to make positive or negative comments and also give a rating of plus one, minus one or neutral. The eBay software would total up the score from all users and add the score in parentheses to a person's name. Users with a total feedback score of negative four were banned from the eBay site. It provided a quick and concise way for a user to see if a person would honour a business transaction. It can be argued that eBay's adoption of virtual community ended up shaping the company (and still does). This is best illustrated by a number of examples. In 1996 after the introduction of the feedback forum it was decided to add a series of coloured stars to each user's name on eBay. A system of stars consisting of the colours yellow, red, green and purple was designed. The system was designed so that the most outstanding eBay users would be recognisable instantly. However, once the new system was announced virtually all users complained that they weren't consulted or asked for any input into the colour selection process. The star system was revised taking into consideration the community views. In 1997 the eBay virtual community also ended up shaping the company's decision-making process. Ebay wished to introduce listing fees for all items and it posted an announcement that this would occur. Similar to the previous example, the virtual community complained vigorously through emails and on discussion boards. Omidyar instead decided to adopt a graduated fee scale, which started at 10 cents. Cohen describes how throughout eBay's history the virtual community has rebelled against major changes, only when it was not given any input. New employees to eBay have found this attribute of the company difficult to understand. One employee made the comment that "when McDonald's launches a new burger it doesn't ask its customers first for permission". Customers simple decide to buy the burger and don't say, "why didn't you talk to me first" (about the type of burger). This attribute of eBay listening to its virtual community and being prepared to change in accordance to community demands represents a new way to conduct business.
Rating: 
Summary: A fun and informative history
Review: Cohen did a good job of gathering evidence and anecdotes, and the book starts out well. Toward the middle and especially at the end, the book feels more like Cohen is shoveling in all his research, in a nonlinear, disorganized fashion. Cohen also misses some obvious themes, in particular failing to question whether eBay is a trust like Standard Oil, gaining ground early and buying or crushing its competitors. This is certainly not history on a par with, say, Ron Chernow's "Titan." But if you want to understand where eBay came from and where the worldwide forum is going, this book can't be beat.
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Summary: enjoyment of book proportionate to involvement in Ebay
Review: Inside Ebay Inside Ebay can be divided into two types of narrative. The first details the history of Ebay. It describes the main players in the early Ebay drama, and recounts the events that placed Ebay in its current marketplace position. For the second type of narrative, Cohen relates Ebay community anecdotes and profiles Ebay users. Most of the history is fairly interesting and well-written. As some have pointed out, it is not an in-depth analysis, but rather an account of events as they happened. I found some of the anecdotes and personality profiles quite entertaining. Others left me wondering what Cohen was thinking when he decided to include them. The main drawback of the book is the way Cohen randomly intermingles history with anecdotes. While any one section of text might be very engaging, the overall choppy flow often detracted by making the chronology difficult to follow. If Cohen started a section with "That summer. . .", I often found myself asking, "What summer are we in again, '98 or '99?" I found Cohen's book to be an adequate diversion. Expect your enjoyment to be somewhat related to your level of involvement in Ebay auctions.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting well-researched story, not-so-well told
Review: Cohen does a wonderful job of trying to find as much information he could on the history of the auctionweb, the formation of eBay Cafe, and the now-familar story of "ebay". Little-known stories on the users in the various "forum" in auctionweb and the later incarnations of eBay makes interesting reading. The book does bring to light some excellent "anecdote"-type of accounts of almost all the main players in the eBay formation. However, the author's objective credibility comes to a grinding hault very soon into the book...He for some reason, seemed to have been over-powered by the "community" aspects of the story and becomes more or less a cheerleader for eBay. Not much discussion was focused on the business model of eBay - which was somewhat disappointing. The book could have used a little more attention in organizing the anecdotes and make it look less like a diary written in a hurry. However, nothing should take away the fantastic effort by the author in researching for the book and trying to present it in as "novel"-like as possible. Easily readable book, with no major claim for any literary standards. Overall, a nice "fictional" book on eBay, with no analysis on business model of eBay and sometimes degenrating into a huge advertisement for the "cult" image of eBay users and community (of which I am a proud member!)
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Summary: Good look at ebay, both the company & community
Review: The Perfect Store is an interesting internet startup story because it spends almost as much time discussing the company's customers ("the community") as the company itself. Ebay may turn out to be the greatest success story of the early internet companies and hence its story merits special attention. I found the book to be well written and an easy read.
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Summary: "Ebaysian" history, people, business, culture--a great read
Review: Not a seller or buyer on Ebay, I wanted to learn something about this e-commerce phenomenon. I hoped to get some behind-the-scene information but Adam Cohen gives us much more--an insider's look at how a tiny free website called Auctionweb, hosted by Pierre Omidyar on his personal website, grew into the multi-billion dollar company where 100,000 people now make their living. This engrossing story takes us from the first days of Auction web--where Omidyar, as a lark, successfully auctioned a broken laser pointer to the evolution of a bare bones company where employees worked in cubicles and had to assemble their own desks from kits and finally to a very profitable and thriving business. The most intriguing aspect of the story is the development of the Ebaysian philosophy--Omidyar's vision of a perfect market, an online auction, where the seller would get the market price for the item on that particular day. Part of this philsophy was involvement of the community in key aspects of Ebay operations. The community embraced this concept and, on a volunteer basis, staffed user bulletin boards giving advice to newcomers on how to get started, and sharing marketing and other business operations advice. After Ebay's IPO and the need to generate increasing profits for their stockholders, management ventured into some practices and ventures that violated this philosophy such as commercial ventures including a Disney site that competed with Ebay's own sellers. The Ebay community protested some of these ideas and management did listen and made changes. Just as fascinating as the story of the evolution of the company is the story of the people behind the company. One fascinating character was Pongo, a message board regular who gave tips on adding digital photos to auction sites. This began one of the many Ebay spinoff companies, Pongo.com, which specialized in an image hosting business. The real person behind Pongo was Jane Dee of Sitka, Alaska, an isolated fishing village of five thousand on Alaska's Baranof Island, accessible only by ferry or plane from the mainland. Jane Dee's history was remarkable in that she was a former amnesiac who literally found a new life for herself through a business and social life on Ebay. Other interesting stories include a housewife looking for cheaper shipping supplies, who started a shipping supply company on Ebay and a man looking to have the winning bid in auctions who wrote sniping software and sold it commercially on Ebay. (To snipe is to enter a bid at the last few seconds and win the auction) Ebay also reflects what is happening in our culture and current events. Ebay listings that made the news were the proposed auction of a kidney, a death row inmate trying to sell tickets this execution and collectibles that appeared after a news event such as the purported raft used by Elian Gonzales to enter the U.S. Ebay jokes are also now a staple of Leno and Letterman While Cohen was given unique access to Ebay management and people, he also covers their mistakes and critics. One almost fatal flaw was a major system failure that brought down Ebay's system for several days and resulted in losses (money and confidance) for sellers. It was a real surprise to me how many people count on Ebay for their living, often selling their bricks and mortar stores and hiring people to do listings, close out auctions and ship products from their Ebay sales. I don't read many non-fiction books but I highly recommend this book both as an engrossing story and a preview of what ecommerce and the internet may have in store for us in the future.
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Summary: Great website if greed doesn't ruin it!
Review: As an eBay junkie, I was looking forward to reading this book. While the author glorified the current management of eBay beyond anything believable, he did do a good job of telling stories about the old timers and most especially of people who have created businesses because of eBay. That is the type of business development information any entrepreneur can use, i.e., see a need, fulfill it and you're in business. It's not rocket science. I just wish the book had been twice as long and told me more about the many names I see so frequently as I cruise eBay.
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Summary: Strategy Text
Review: I picked this up thinking I would find an enjoyable read about Pierre's dream business, and indeed I got that. But what amazed me is that Adam Cohen writes a brilliant strategy text and doesn't even realize it. In the world of MBAs this book is a great case study of how David becomes Golliath and maintains the David roots.
Even if eBay bores you to tears, and you have never bought or sold on eBay, you will learn from this book.
I would love to see a similar book by Cohen be written on a high flying start up that raised millions from VC firms only to fail as a business.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting Substance, Deeply Flawed Book...
Review: First of all, let me just say that Mr. Cohen clearly did his research before he wrote this book. There are a thousand little tidbits of information scattered throughout the 200 pages of this book that show a great attention to detail. Now here's the bad part: all those interesting tidbits are thrown in totally random order across the pages of "The Perfect Store". Cohen presents about 25 pages of factual information about eBay and breaks it up with 175 pages of fluff on everything from cross-dressing eBay customer support staff to a woman selling bubble wrap. Every bit of weirdness that has ever happened in the entire history of eBay (a whole 4 years) gets a half page dedicated to it. While some of these stories are amusing, they pop up out of nowhere (literally, all these sections just appear and they have nothing whatsoever to do with the storyline) and are so shallowly presented in Cohen's half-page treatment that the reader is left with a kind of empty feeling: the weird people that come by to disrupt the story just don't seem real the way Cohen describes them. All in all then, this book doesn't leave much to recommend it. It really avoids in-depth discussions of eBay "The Business" (preferring instead to talk about eBay "The Cult") and even then the cast of characters are portrayed so poorly that "The Perfect Store" doesn't even read well as a work of fiction. Because really, this book can't truly be considered non-fiction, just look at the title (a PERFECT store?!). Somewhere in the research process for the book Cohen became some sort of eBay fanatic and it seriously undermined his editorial judgment. This book could really have been written by the eBay marketing department. On the bright side, the book does read pretty quickly if you don't get too frustrated with it...
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