Computer Hysteria:  Going, Going, Gone!

           
        by Berry F. Phillips   January 2004


In the month of December, we watched the Year 2003 going, going, gone—like sands in an hour glass. Many of us celebrated the demise of 2003 as though it were an Irish wake. (I am still trying to recover from the great time I had at Opening Night in downtown Oklahoma City.)

When I think of "going, going, gone" in my imagination, I hear the sharp sound of an auction gavel followed by the word, "Sold." The first auctions were in about 500 BC in Babylon, and the first products sold were women. Many men would bid in public on women they wanted to marry. Women in good condition brought high bids, and conversely, women in very poor condition might have to pay the man to take them home with him. (You see, women's liberation had not been introduced into Babylon at that time.)

In our modern era, the Internet has dramatically transformed the
traditional auction business into online auctions where bidders can
participate by sitting in front of their PCs and simply clicking a mouse.

Web pages are open 24 hours a day and to a global audience. Some
auction experts predict traditional auctions that do not have their own Internet auction bases may not be able to survive in approximately five years.

Most people would probably agree, that among the various online auctions, eBay is the most popular with the largest customer base and operated as a person-to-person auction service. eBay's revenues have grown steadily since its inception in 1995.  eBay was co-founded by Pierre Omidyar and Jeff Skull in San Jose, CA. From the start, eBay was meant to be a marketplace for the sale of goods and services for individuals. In 1998 to sustain eBay's success, Meg Whitman, who studied at Harvard Business School, was hired and organized an experienced management team with an average of 20 years of business experience.  They built a strong vision for the company of being in the business of connecting people, not selling them things. eBay is one of the Internet's greatest success stories.

Before your humble writer is "going, going," on behalf of the staff of
the eMonitor and the Oklahoma City PC Users Group, I want to wish you and yours a Happy New Year!  ......"Gone!"

Berry Phillips is a member of the OKCPCUG and a regular writer for the OKCPCUG website and the eMonitor