eBay

eBay Inc. is an online shopping center created for the purpose of buying and selling to occur between people and businesses for a wide variety of goods. Created in 1995 and becoming public in 1998, eBay was originally founded as an American internet company but has expanded to dozens of other countries. The site’s membership is open to anyone looking to buy or sell virtually anything—whether new, old, broken, expensive, cheap, useful, lost, or alive, your selection includes few exceptions of potential and permissible items. The actual purchases happen through an auction system with items being sold to the highest bidder within the previously set time allotment. The site has become extremely useful for those looking for the best price options for desired items or—and often more importantly—items difficult to locate. Disadvantages of this new communication technology include the notion of fraud, inflating shipping costs, auction sniping, stealing accounts, and forgeries. For a company, however, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages due to benefits from reaching the multiple millions of people familiar with the site’s functions, and the simplicity it brings towards the act of buying and selling. For a company, usefulness ratings would be a 9 out of 10. The site has exponentially grown to reach millions of users and has been thriving for ten consecutive years. Considering this information and the fact that eBay owns PayPal and Skype, I’d say that this new communication technology is extremely useful and effective through its obvious success.