The Perfect Store: Inside Ebay - Tapa dura

eBay is one of the most successful commercial sites on the Internet. This is the story of eBay's humble beginnings, when it was launched from a spare bedroom in Pierre Omidyar's house, to its status today - with 20 million users. eBay started as a way to help Omidyar's fiancee trade with other collectors. It returned a profit in its first month and went on to change the face of business. This volume: reveals details of the company's rapid rise and the impact it has had on its users throughout the virtual marketplace; examines the range of customers, from the woman who wakes at 3 am to bid on a toaster, to the woman who had to rent a warehouse for her thriving business selling bubble-wrap; reveals why eBay has succeeded where so many dot-coms have failed; and provides information for those trying to understand how the Web is changing business, and for those trying to anticipate the next big thing.

Adam Cohen is the chief technology writer for Time and the co-authro of American Pharoah. He has written for Chicago Magazine, the Chicago Tribune and the Harvard Law Review. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School. He lives in New York.