The Perfect Store: Inside eBay

Interesting content, well written, takes the story from 1995 to 2001. Could do with an update to cover the acquisition and disposal of Skype, acquisition and growth of PayPal, change of CEO, threat from a resurgent Amazon etc

Great book. Really interesting read and I really enjoyed it.

An interesting read... the next book is going to be called the DEFECT store apparently ;-)

The Perfect Store described how eBay was founded and the first couple of years of its development. Actually, the book is a collection of short stories related to eBay. Some are from the eBay founding, some are from people whos life has been transformed by eBay, some are from eBay employees. The stories together try to give a picture of the creation of eBay.I can't give a content as the book doesn't have a clear table of content or structure. The book just starts with the story of the eBay founder, Piette Omidyar, and his initial creation of AuctionWeb (pre-eBay). How he met with Jeff Skoll and set up the company that eventually became known as eBay. It is an interesting story, yet a lot of details on the challenges of creating the site are left out of the book.The rest of the book just continues telling different stories from eBay and most of them are somewhat in chronological order. There is especially a strong focus on community and how eBay direction was driven by the eBay community... and actions that eBay did to upset the community. Examples of these are the discussion about selling guns, the discussion about putting ads on the site, and several others (such as policies about used underwear). The stories were fun to read, interesting, yet didn't feel very special. But the book is well written, in the sense that it is easy to read and was a fun read.My biggest disappointment about the perfect store was that it was less about eBay than I had hoped. I mean, it was less about the eBay company. It was obvious that the author wasn't very technical and not a huge eBay user either. So, the book omits nearly every technical detail and even describes (in true MBA fashion) the technical side as a side-thing, whereas the site is actually the main and only thing eBay has. Similarly, it didn't really talk too much of eBay as an organization, which made me feel, at times, the book was shallow.In conclusion. A good and fun read. Yet, disappointing as I expected more. Therefore, I'll stick with 3 stars as I did enjoy the book, but wouldn't quickly recommend it to people. Only recommended if you are a eBay fan. Not when you want to know about the company history nor when you want to know about technical things and internet startups.

If you are looking for a lot of information about ebay in one place, this is pretty good. I agree with a previous poster who said that it was a bit disjointed. For example, the complete story of the Christian woman who came to work at ebay under humble circumstances, and then was promoted to head of the eBay foundation takes about 3-4 pages, but it's spread out over 2/3 of the book. There are many stories that are interwoven piecemeal through the book that it takes away from the sense of chronological progression of the story.This book definitely has a neutral to positive spin. If you're looking for ebay bashing this isn't it.