Inside View from Ireland: About eBay

SCOBLE -- Robert Scoble offers some useful facts about eBay.

$70b to $80b runs through the eBay platform every quarter.
Every hour eBay registers 3000 to 4000 new users.
eBay expects $3.5b in 2004 revenues.
Every day about a terabyte of data courses through eBay's data centers.
Most of eBay's machines run Windows but the back end is running on Sun servers.
Last year 10,000 customers showed up for the first "eBay Live" conference. This year's event is expected to see even more people.
Nearly 5000 people work for eBay. Another 1000 will be added in 2004.
eBay's founder, Pierre Omidyar, started eBay because he wanted a way to sell and buy Pez dispensers and there wasn't a good way to do that on the Internet before. By the way, Pierre is a blogger.
eBay has a high degree of customer lockin. How? Well, for one, many of their customers are getting rich (he says he knows a few power sellers who have already retired). Second, the more you buy and sell on eBay, the better your ratings, and those aren't transferable to other auction systems.
Jeffrey McManus runs eBay's vibrant developer programme.