We celebrated our 15th anniversary as a company last week and it really got me thinking about what an individual human being means to the success of any venture.
There is a long-standing ritual at eBay events in which all the attendees stand-up and remain standing until a number is announced that exceeds their eBay Feedback Score on eBay.com. It’s an exercise we’ve continued at the four eBay: On Location Events this year and, with a Feedback score of 86, admittedly I’m typically one of the first to sit down. We got to 391 last week before CEO, John Donahoe, had to take a seat on the stage…
Invariably the exercise takes about 20-30 minutes to complete because there is always a handful of sellers present (as there was last week) that have Feedback scores exceeding 100,000. Never ceases to amaze me.
“I Am Not A Number!”
There is a similar phenomenon happening over on Twitter where individuals are really trying to boost their number of followers, and talk about that number with pride; a conversation at a social event here in Silicon Valley inevitably gets to the “how many followers do you have on Twitter?” discussion sooner rather than later. (More …)
