How Can A Dot Com Be This Hot?

Overhype

from the the-last-remaining-dot-com dept

Fortune has a long article looking at how eBay has thrived despite the dot com collapse. The company is doing well. It’s making money, it’s growing, and even it’s stock price is doing well. It’s still valued more than Sears and Kmart combined. Basically, they talk about eBay’s strong management team (mostly with Fortune 500 backgrounds), but say that isn’t all. Afterall, Webvan had experienced management too. The trick is that they’ve executed extremely well, and haven’t put too much effort into hyping their own company. They really let it build itself. At the same time, they very carefully listen to what their users are saying and doing – even if the users don’t always believe that. Obviously, the article makes them sound great – but it does make one very good point near the end. Analysts and “dot com” people love eBay because it’s the shining example to prove that they weren’t totally stupid in hyping up the dot com era. Part of me thinks that this article is the type of ominous “everything’s wonderful!” article that you often see right before a company collapses under some scandal (such as Enron or Microstrategy).