After getting back from the 16,000 strong eBay Live conference last week, I was asked by a number of people about statistics. I posted about eBay Nation (see video) – that there are 200 million users which if it were a country would be the 5th largest in the world. Here are some more interesting stats from Jim Courtney at Skype Journal about eBay, Skype and PayPal:
PayPal services 105 million accounts in 50 countries; PayPal provides the payment mechanism for 67% of eBay transactions. (PayPal has more accounts that Amex and Discover combined.) Skype, in Q1 of 2006, provided infrastructure for 6.9 billion minutes of long distance calling; representing 7% of all long distance call minutes worldwide. eBay: last year sold a “Gross Merchandise Value” of $44B, representing 14% of all ecommerce on the Net.
eBay is a phenomenon that isn’t going to stop anytime soon. I read a great transcript of a Meg Whitman talking to the Financial Times where she states:
We have the number one ecommerce for franchise, the number one online payment standard, and the number one voice communications player in the world. I think we have three of the best brands on the Net. Maybe three of the top five brands on the Net are eBay brands.
They’re sitting in a very powerful position for future growth. Sure, it won’t be all in the auction world, but they’re branching out and will continue to grow at a steady rate.
June 22, 2006 at 6:54 am
Just to put that in perspective, I just returned from Microsoft’s TechEd conference and that had a mere 13,000 in attendance. That’s a *lot* of people and it’s still eclipsed by the 3,000 extra at the eBay conference.
Wow.
June 22, 2006 at 5:30 pm
You got hit by this!
June 22, 2006 at 11:12 pm
That’s a lot of people David, 13-16k is no small number. It really makes you appreciate the size of this country when you realize that so many people can get interested AND pay the fees to go to some of these conferences.
June 27, 2006 at 2:11 am
Hi zungu. Really enjoyed your site!
I thought you might wanna check out mine. Since you’re an RVA grad, I know lotsa my experiences will resonate with you at some level.
Keep up the good work on your efforts.
-nuther zungu
June 27, 2006 at 8:41 pm
Great site Paul, thanks for the link. Are you going to be at the Reunion/Centennial?