eBay and the Lemming Factor

In the last week or so, a blog guest post by Keith Rabois on Techcrunch has been circulating about the fact that eBay may have lost its mojo. That it isn't fun any more. He's entitled to his opinion, but I think he's looking at it in the wrong context. What's going on with eBay right now is something I call the Lemming effect.

What's the Lemming effect? Very simple - it's all those people who have to run out and get the latest and greatest and newest so they can tell all their friends they were first and smartest. Only in the end they basically fall on their faces. For example, remember all those people who lined up for the first iPhones? And remember how they ended up paying a higher price? Or all the people who seem to line up for Microsoft's newest operating systems? And then suffer from all the subsequent glitches that are fixed down the road?

When eBay was new and pretty and shiny, telling your friends you had to stay up unitl 2:00 a.m. for an auction to close was cool. Or scoring a really good deal like $400 for a new Apple computer.
Nothing has changed at eBay, and I guess all the uncool people are still doing that. But the lemmings have moved on to MySpace, FaceBook and Twitter or whatever other shiny object they see. So even though the lemmings have all jumped off the mountan, the mountain still remains. eBay will probably be around for a long time to come. There just won't be as many people bragging about it.