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> You also have little recourse if a buyer rates you poorly (I guess punish him back by rating him badly too?)

Hilariously, sellers can't leave negative feedback for buyers: http://pages.ebay.com/services/forum/sellerprotection.html

If you're selling on eBay and something goes wrong (buyer claims she received a box of rocks), there really isn't much to do. PayPal and eBay favor buyers so much that if the buyer really wants her money back, she'll certainly get it.

I'm still puzzled as to why they didn't go with a system where the seller and buyer feedback are both secret until both have been set.

Because nefarious sellers and buyers would have unlimited license to prevent negative feedback from being posted to their account, ever. They would always appear to be a new seller/buyer.

That doesn't sound right. I bought a mobile phone on eBay and the seller sent me a unit that was (a) a different model and (b) clearly used. I jumped through all kinds of hoops, culminating in a letter from my lawyer certifying I received a different phone. The end result was, I could not return or exchange the unit, and my negative feedback and rating were erased. Stories like mine are legion. eBay emphatically does not favor buyers, they screw everyone equally.

> I have something that due to the niche of the product, makes it very hard to sell to anywhere BUT eBay...It is truly the network effect at work.

I get the impression you assume the network effect is something that just happens over night. The network effect is extremely hard to master and takes a lot of money/time to do so. Hence why the fees are as high as they are.

> So I hope this blows up in their face and that they continue to lose market and mindshare.

Care to elaborate? I wasn't under the impression ebay was doing either.[1]

[1] - http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=EBAY+Interactive#symbol=E...

> I get the impression you assume the network effect is something that just happens over night. The network effect is extremely hard to master and takes a lot of money/time to do so. Hence why the fees are as high as they are.

Network Effect as in they use their sizable userbase to prevent any other competition in the space. For online auctions to work you need a large buyer base so it can attract a large seller base.

I never said it was easy or difficult, not even sure you need to "master" it, but who cares? That wasn't even an important point of that sentence, which was that it's difficult to sell anywhere BUT eBay because of the Network Effect

Fees are high because eBay has no idea how to keep earning money except to gouge people. They certainly can't make buyers pay anything so the sellers essentially get dumped with more and more "fees". I am still confused how that relates to the discussion about the Network Effect. They worked hard initially and now they deserve to gouge people who are using their site?

> Care to elaborate? I wasn't under the impression ebay was doing either.[1]

I cannot prove either but how does showing a stock price disprove what I said? They can still lose marketshare and still have a positive stock price. And they continue to make profits because they continue to bleed their sellers dry.

Ask anyone (or I guess, just sellers would be more accurate) if they would use eBay if they had to. They would say, "Fuck No", so why do they use it? Because, Network Effect.

> Network Effect as in they use their sizable userbase to prevent any other competition in the space

That's not network effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect). I think you mean to say: "It's unfair that a service, which provides more value than a coompetitor, charges a higher fee"?

The Network Effect does not imply monopolistic behaviour.

That's two distinct issues. Although large successful companies tend to do both, it does not imply causality.

It is true that the need for the network effect is a Barrier to Entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barriers_to_entry), which is what keeps your "competitor" from entering, and which leaves Ebay with monopolistic situation - intented or not.

> For online auctions to work you need a large buyer base so it can attract a large seller base.

And how do you propose companies should attain a large buyer base without spending large amounts of money? eBay is NOT forcing you to use their platform, much like google is not forcing you to use their search engine. Customer acquisition is EXPENSIVE.

> They worked hard initially and now they deserve to gouge people who are using their site?

I don't think I follow your logic? Software development and marketing don't just all of the sudden stop as soon as a company attains a substantial network effect. Should facebook stop developing now that it has a substantial network effect?

> Fees are high because eBay has no idea how to keep earning money except to gouge people.

How do you propose they protect their network effect then?

> I cannot prove either...Ask anyone (or I guess, just sellers would be more accurate) if they would use eBay if they had to. They would say, "Fuck No", so why do they use it? Because, Network Effect.

Classic case of Cognitive dissonance.[1] If I read between the lines all I hear is "complain complain complain", with no substantial evidence to back it up. If this is that big of an issue, you (or anyone for that matter) would see an opportunity and steal market share yourself. I'm sure you would find the costs of establishing and maintaining a network effect exponentially difficult.

[1]- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance

That was the first thing I noticed. Even their logo is so badly compressed it hurts my eyes. And for example this part - http://pics.ebaystatic.com/aw/pics/announcements/new/logo/te... - gives the impression that the front-end guy was trying to implement the design very fast. I liked the scrolling effect on the "promo" page though, quite creative.

I'm assuming I don't really have an eye for design, but could you explain what's wrong with this infographic? Seems fine to me?

It's boring and doesn't really make any sense. What is that pictograph for sellers meant to mean? Why is there 1 picture of a person for ~3 million active users? The layout is also oddly inconsistent. It goes from having "NNN" and "MILLION" equal width on 3 of them to only getting up to half way through the O in MILLION in the other 2. I suspect that's because one of the pictographs didn't look right squashed into the available space so they expanded it into the number area, but then they had to make the one above it match so that things looked balanced still. Why is the number of mobile registrations in 2012 not an Arabic digit like everything else?

It's not really an infographic, it's just some somewhat suspectly typeset data and some icons.

Design is completely fine as well as the content. Putting it as a one big image straight into website, less so.