The Liberal Order

Own one of Elton John's pianos.

SIR Elton John is selling his distinctive red piano on eBay.

The highest bid so far for the instrument, which he autographed after his Oscars party, is £100,000.

The cash will go to the Elton John Aids Foundation which has raised £60million.

The Yamaha piano, named Fiona, goes on tour with him and is one of his favourites. Only six of his keyboards have names. Elton, left, last played Fiona at his party in Hollywood on Sunday then signed her and lacquered the autograph to preserve it.

Its eBay listing says the piano is "steeped in Elton's rich musical history".

Story here. It looks like Sharon Stone is the current high bidder, if that is to believed.

CD Sharing

Lala.com provides an end around service to illegal downloading music. According to Kevin Maney of USA Today:

How it works: Users start by listing all their CDs. Then they look at menus of available CDs or through other people's CD collections, clicking on those they'd like to receive.

A request, say, for Coldplay's X&Y, generates a blind notice to anyone who has that CD that someone wants it. The first to agree to send it sees the address of the person who wants the CD, then mails it in a pre-paid envelope (which La La sends users when they sign up).

La La users get charged $1 for each CD they receive. They have to send a CD to get a CD, which is supposed to prevent anyone from abusing the system by only receiving CDs. Users are instructed to send the original CD, not a copy.

From Lala's web site:

I ask you to do your part by doing the right thing: remove songs from your iPod or PC if you've agreed to send the CD to another member.

If you want to listen to that CD again, just add it to your Want List and help us support that artist you can't get enough of. You'll have access to plenty of good music to enjoy in the meantime. We'll make sure of that!

Younger people are far more likely to use this site as younger people are far more likely to download songs illegally. Sorry, I'm not lending out my CDs. This essentially is a network for music CDs that competes with eBay. That is, on eBay you buy the CD, copy it, and then resell it on eBay. This simply removes the actual transaction and increases the risk of receiving a damaged CD.

Oh, the Chutzpa!

Woman attempts to buy Monique Lhuillier wedding dress on eBay.
Woman is high bidder, but her bid does not meet the seller's reserve price.
Seller contacts woman telling her to contact her at a different email address.
You get where this is going.
Woman contacts seller, who tells her to wire the $2,900 via Western Union.
Dress does not arrive as expected.
Woman emails seller . . . "Dear Kate," This deal concerns me, I'm not "toally off base to be wary."
To which Kate replies:

"That's true, indeed. I just scammed you, sorry for that, it's nothing personal. ... It's what I do, and it pays well."

eBay is under fire for the fraud that is reported, but it's much overblown. Here is a story on eBay's response to the recent spate of fraud stories. At the end is this from Forrester Research, an Internet research company.

If users were being exposed to fraud an undue amount, it would create a drag on eBay's growth and create opportunities for more secure trading platforms to gain a foothold, said Forrester Research Vice President and analyst Carrie Johnson.

"The fact that no one has really challenged eBay is a reflection of its market strength but also the fact that it scores well on customer satisfaction," Johnson told the E-Commerce Times.

Most users understand the risks involved with buying on eBay, and the site has built in opportunities for buyers to complain about incomplete or questionable transactions, Johnson noted, with the vast majority of sales completed as advertised.

eBayersthatsuck.com

I am doubtful of the efficacy of this venture. It offers a place for people who believe that they were ripped off by someone on eBay to vent their frustration from the experience, but essentially it becomes cheap talk.

The Netflix Operation

How does Netflix process and distribute the millions of DVDs it handles each day ? Check out the video in this link.

Creative Seduction

Flirting in Traffic is kind of like internet dating in reverse! Rather than looking at photos and reading profiles, you already met the person out on the street somewhere! You see their bold maroon sticker, remember their "Flirting ID" and then come here to meet up! It's that simple, and yes, it's that cool!!

Online tools for solving online problems

Most bidding on eBay comes in the final five minutes of the auction. Unwired Buyer, which allows you to bid by phone, solves the problem of not having a computer accessible during the final minutes of an auction.

Also, Boardfirst.com solves the problem if obtaining a group A boarding pass on Southwest Airlines, which  allows the holder to board the plane in the first group (third).

Thanks to Russ Robers for the Boardfirst link.

Some useful links . . .

. . . for online utilities that help you do things.

Thanks to Mike Yamamoto at Esoterica Blog.

Happy Birthday eBay

Ten years ago this weekend, Pierre Omidyar, the grandson of a general in the former Shah of Iran’s Royal Iranian Army, sat at a computer on his kitchen table and developed what was to become eBay. Developed as an electronic marketplace for individuals living in the San Francisco Bay area, Omidyar turned a profit within six months, and was earning enough after just one year to quit his full-time job as a programmer. The rest, as they say, is history.

In September of 1998, eBay went public at a split-adjusted price of 75¢. eBay’s current share price (Friday, September 2) is just under $40, nearly 53 times greater than its initial public offering. Fifty six million active users from around the world exchanged roughly $34 billion worth of mostly used goods via 1.4 billion listings in 2004. Almost none of the surplus generated from these sales will be registered as GDP.

Omidyar's kitchen table experiment is fascinating for a number of reasons. First, Omidyar was completely surprised by eBay’s immediate success in that he didn’t expect this virtual market to extend much beyond the SF Bay area. Why would anyone send money from their home in, say, Washington, DC to a complete stranger in San Diego for a good he has never even seen? The success of eBay reinforces the fact that individuals living in market capitalist societies are far more trusting and trustworthy than conventional wisdom imagined. Second, eBay is a wonderfully transparent marketplace where analyzing the dynamism of the market process is possible. Third, it’s a venue for observing spontaneously emerging social norms of behavior. And lastly, is underscores the importance of information spreading as an enforcement mechanism for contracting and abidance to social norms.

Although I've been fascinated by eBay and have spent much time researching the firm and its users, I have also had doubts about its ability to continue. As users become more heterogeneous there is increasing potential for incidences of fraud to increase. And given the fact that cooperation is contingent on others' cooperating, the tipping point where widespread cooperation breaks down is relatively small. (Consider how easily lawlessness took over New Orleans.) This is of course just speculation and so far I have been proven wrong. I hope that this trend continues.   

Here is a story with some interesting facts about eBay's first ten years.

Addendum: Edited the opening paragraph for clarity.

What Sells on eBay

A listing of things that are currently hot on eBay.