What was ebays first name

For example, one idea -- "Bang" -- was rejected because you couldn't make a verb out of it without sounding, well, inappropriate. Bang her and find out! So the marketers decided to put their money on " Bing. The name also reminded people of the moment an idea is hatched, sort of like when that little light bulb goes off over a cartoon character's head. You hear a "Bing," which is what Microsoft hopes will happen when you use their website.

One of the fastest-growing websites around, Reddit was started in by then-college students Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian. The site allows community members to submit links to online content, which is then voted up or down to decide which submissions are most worthy of being read by everyone else. The name Reddit is little more than a play on the phrase "read it," as in, "I read it online. One loose translation of "reddit" is "render," which can mean "to submit for consideration or approval," which is exactly what people do on the site.

Groupon and its ilk might be the talk of the town right now, but for the true innovator in the online "Deal of the Day" game, look no further than woot. Since , Woot has offered a new item every night at midnight to devoted fans, known as Wooters, who obsessively check Woot's sites to buy everything from computers to flashlights to a "Bag of Crap" BOC -- a coveted, mystery grab bag that is often sold out within minutes of its unveiling. If you're at all familiar with internet culture, you'll know that "woot" is also an expression of excitement, sometimes spelled "w00t.

So Woot is named after "w00t," but where does "w00t" come from? That's actually a bit of a mystery. Some believe it first appeared in the mids, adopted from the songs "Whoomp! There It Is! Still others say it comes from an old hacker term used whenever someone has gained full, or "root," access to a server, exclaiming "w00t! I have root! What Was Ebay's Original Name? The first name eBay used was Echo Bay Technology. The original name of the eBay auction website was Auction Web.

I'm actually not sure about these answers At the same time, its growth and popularity were putting the spotlight on the company and user expectations became more sophisticated. The day before the secondary offering, Amazon. In May the company made three acquisitions. Both Butterfield, a year-old San Francisco auction house, and Kruse International, an automobile auctioneer in Indiana known for collector cars, helped eBay move into a higher-priced market.

The third purchase, Billpoint Inc. Sellers on eBay could now use Billpoint to instantly accept credit cards and buyers would be able to receive reference reports listing all their transactions. In addition, to provide its members with more news and information about their collectibles, eBay signed an agreement with the Collecting Channel to provide "content" on the site.

The first offering was information about Star Wars memorabilia. In June , however, eBay was shaken as its web site experienced numerous crashes. The company was a few days away from completing installation of a backup system when outages began, including one lasting 22 hours.

Competitors such as Amazon. Within days of the outages, however, eBay gave journalists something else to write about: global expansion. It moved into Europe with the acquisition of Alando de AG, Germany's largest online trading site, and considered adding a Japanese-language corner to provide support for its 6, members in Japan.

Yahoo, however, beat eBay to the punch and launched its own site in September , a full five months before eBay officially added its Japanese site. This delay would prove a pivotal mistake in eBay's plans for global expansion. Competition also moved to the high end of the auction market as drew to a close.

Christie's International indicated it would soon be adding an interactive section to its web site, and smaller companies handling decorative and fine art or antiques were also going online. Behind all the action was the tremendous potential for sales.

Experts predicted the online auction field would grow to Great Collections later renamed eBay Premier was launched in October , with partnering auction houses, galleries, and dealers having their own branded areas and offering the same authentication services they did in their brick-and-mortar locations.

In the week of January 9, eBay set a new record for attracting just under 1. Some of the firm's more creative users, however, had learned how to rig bids and outcomes; buyers teamed up with bidding partners, while sellers had buddies submitting fake high bids.

This was due in part to measures taken two years before when the subject of fraud was addressed by CEO Whitman and eBay's board. Though founder and Chairman Omidyar feared tighter controls might alienate some of eBay's diehard users, several measures had been implemented including the ban on weapons, placing adult-themed items in a secure area, offering buyers insurance from the esteemed Lloyds of London, and allowing sellers a discounted rate at Equifax to run credit checks.

The biggest news of early was not security but the possible merger between eBay and mega-portal Yahoo. Both firms owned pay-online businesses Yahoo bought Arthas. Talks, however, fell apart.

In mid eBay bought the Philadelphia-based Half. While eBay finalized its acquisition of Half. While eBay Chairman Omidyar spent time in Paris working on eBay's international expansion, Whitman continued to expand the company's domestic operations.

At the end of a new service called BusinessExchange, a business-to-business marketplace for small companies to buy office products and equipment, was launched by eBay to maintain its lead as the world's top online auctioneer. In January eBay suffered another outage, this time a crash lasting for 11 hours. While the company blamed the crash on a series of "glitches," IT analysts believed eBay's Sun Microsystems hardware and Oracle software were no longer up to the task of handling millions of transactions a day.

The company denied such reports, claiming confidence in its systems. With eBay's difficulties, minor as they were, competitors were still unable to topple its reign. Yahoo, which had gained considerable ground and was the Web's third most visited firm, lost the majority of its online auction clients after starting to charge fees in the first quarter of Not waiting for Yahoo to regain its footing, eBay inked a deal with Microsoft, the Internet's second most visited firm behind AOL, to be featured on a myriad of its web sites and to serve as its default auction provider.

In early eBay signed an agreement with Priceline. Next came a partnership with Sotheby's to market high-end collectibles.