The Perfect Store: Inside Ebay by Cohen Adam

Author:Cohen, Adam [Cohen, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Hachette Book Group
Published: 2008-12-03T16:00:00+00:00

On February 22, 1999, Randy Pinkham, Pinkhamr from the gun-ban blowup, decided to try something new on the Discuss New Features board. He carefully timed a post so it went up at 10:22 and 22 seconds P.M. eBay time. Since message board posts are date- and time-stamped, it appeared with the notation 22:22:22. Pinkham had chosen the date, of course, because it was 2-22. The only explanation he gave was that “it seemed kind of neat.” In the days that followed, other DNF posters joined in posting at the same time, with a communal purpose: to see how many posts they could get up on the DNF board in that one-second window. An eBay tradition was born that day, pronounced “two's” and spelled TUZ.

The number of participants grew over time. Every night, as 10:22:22 P.M. approached, DNFers announced that it was almost time for TUZ, and postings on other topics stopped. It was a trick to time a posting just right: the X factor was the speed of the user's Internet connection. A post sent at exactly 22:22:22 would almost certainly be too late. But as with sniping, it was difficult to know just how much lead time to allow. For two years after the first TUZ, the record number of posts to arrive and be logged in as 22:22:22 was twenty-five. On February 22, 2001, the two-year anniversary of Pinkham's first TUZ post, a new record was set: thirty-eight. It was such an extraordinary performance that rumors spread through the TUZ community that eBay had delayed the clock for a second to let more posts in. One TUZer created an online homage to TUZ. The webpage, at http://members.ebay.com/aboutme/tuzzled/#history, included a TUZ hall of fame, a TUZ history, and a list of birthdays of regular TUZ participants.

TUZ was one of the many little rituals that existed on eBay message boards. DNF also had regular Friday-night seventies sing-alongs, in which users posted, one after the next, lines from their favorite songs. The Elvis chat board had a virtual celebration of the King's birthday every January 8, complete with personal recollections of encounters with Elvis and digital photos of birthday cakes. These online amusements were mainly just about having fun. “We're being goofy, like kids,” says Pinkham. “Hell, I'm fifty-two years old.” But there was also a practical aspect. It was a way for hard-core eBay users, particularly sellers—some of whom had to spend twelve or more hours at their computers listing and responding to customer e-mail—to fend off boredom and loneliness. It was also evidence that even after the IPO, the increased emphasis on profits, and the dustups between management and users, the heart of eBay—the community—was still beating.

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