Ten years ago, Pirre Omidyar took time out from his Silicon Valley day-job to create a new kind of online trading system, now called eBay.
That opening day was not exactly a roaring success. In fact, the site attracted no visitors at all in its first 24 hours. (71 )[But within weeks, a few dozen items were already being offered for sale.] (72)[By the end of 1995, several thousand auctions,attracting more than 10,000 bids, had taken place.] Now eBay has 157 million users in 34 countries, and its annual profits will reach $ 1 billion this year.
(73) [The next step is for eBay a business-to-business platform as well, offering a channel for large-scale supply and procurement.] (74)[The company intends to make the site more user-friendly for businesses trading in bulk.] (75) [Despite eBay’s dominant market position in many countries, the company is not complacent about the future.]