In 2003, the nation finally felt worn out. That's the conclusion when looking at the year through the unique lens of eBay, the gigantic, freewheeling online marketplace where one can buy anything from a Beanie Baby to a backhoe.
In a year of lives lost at war and jobs lost to a difficult economy, of a crisis of faith in two institutions - mutual funds and the North American electrical grid - that previously seemed unshakeable, judiciousness took hold.
At the beginning of 2003, BMWs, Gucci and Prada reigned supreme on eBay (EBAY). All were among the 10 most-searched terms. Last year, the No. 1 search was for Gucci.
Here at the end of 2003, the most-searched items have shifted to Fords, anything pink (forget which designer), and gold (the kind you store in a wall safe as a hedge against geopolitical or economic disaster).
There are many ways to analyze 2003. You can sift through major news events. You can chart best-selling books and top-rated TV shows. You can dissect the stock market. But if you want the gestalt of America - the unified essence of this nation at this time - there might be no better place to turn than the massive databases that run eBay.
There sits a repository of culture and commerce unlike any before it. No executive decides what eBay sells. Instead, millions of individuals post items on the Web site in response to shifting nuances in the marketplace. Because it is so fluid, the site captures the collective mood and unique extremes of the 86 million people who use it.
"EBay is the perfect manifestation of everything the Internet makes possible," says Aliza Sherman, a Web pioneer now teaching and writing in Laramie, Wyo. "It is for and by the people. It is organic."
So USA TODAY came here to eBay's campus, where the lobby features a Pez dispenser collection and conference rooms have names like Fiestaware and Matchbook, and asked the company's computer wizards to cut the site's data every which way, looking for trends and oddities that help define the year we're leaving behind.
Of course, it's not perfect. As much information as eBay collects, there's still a lot it doesn't yet know about its marketplace. The company is in the process of installing better ways to mine its data. At this point, conclusions are less an exact science and more artful extrapolation. Using eBay's data to find larger trends is a little like watching a movie trailer and trying to figure out the whole movie's story. Then again, people do that all the time.
In that spirit, some tidbits about 2003 from the eBay files:
• The Aug. 14 blackout in the Northeast shook confidence in the power grid. In the week after the blackout, sales of portable generators jumped 67% vs. the previous week. But it wasn't just a knee-jerk spike. Generator sales on eBay are running at an annualized rate of $12 million, up 191% over 2002. It seems we're sure another outage is coming, and we want to be ready.
• Wireless home computer networks have hit the mainstream. Sales on eBay of equipment for so-called Wi-Fi networks, which can let computers connect to the Internet wirelessly, have grown 243% over 2002. It is the hottest technology category.
• SARS scared the pants off a lot of people. At the height of the epidemic, in May, eBay's "protective masks" category shot up 118% for the month. Sellers were listing masks singly, by the box and by the pallet.
• People are just stinkin' weird. One listing offered to sell Paul McCartney's germs from a used tissue. After baseball fan Steve Bartman interfered with a pop foul ball in the Chicago Cubs' playoff series, someone tried to sell his personal contact information on eBay. (EBay pulled the listing.)
Currently, you can, if you wish, buy a kangaroo scrotum. It costs about $10.
Downshifting in vogue
Skulking through all the eBay data, though, is the mounting weight of persistent economic malaise.
Though government numbers show the economy is rebounding after more than two years of doldrums, the eBay economy suggests something different. In fact, it seems to show a lag effect. People and companies downshifted as 2003 wore on.
For instance, eBay tracks searched words, which in turn are indicative of what buyers are looking for. Word searches for all of 2002 reflect a society still spending freely. Among the top 10 searches for the year were BMW, Louis Vuitton, Prada and Coach.
Similar terms dominated the top 10 into early 2003, until August, when there was a sudden shift. The Iraq war was dragging on. Companies were still cutting jobs and keeping raises flat. The blackout hit. California was in political chaos with its recall vote. And just then the luxury names dropped off eBay's top 10, replaced by more mundane words such as Ford, Chevy and diesel.
In September, "salvage" made it to the top 10.
Meanwhile, the economy drove individual sellers to eBay, hoping to make extra cash in tough times. In July, Bill and Peterene Stanhope of Pembroke, Mass., listed a 14-acre island they owned off the coast of Maine. Bill's importing business was suffering, as was Peterene's business of making bookmarks. They needed to sell the island, which they'd bought years earlier, to make ends meet.
For similar reasons, eBay's industrial products market took off in 2003. As an example, doctors and dentists, squeezed by insurance companies, turned to eBay in 2003 to buy medical equipment. In general, medical professionals are wary of buying used equipment. But the category is up more than 100% over last year.
"I don't see any huge economic recovery," says Neal Sherman, whose company, The Advantage Group, uses eBay to liquidate goods for companies and public entities. It recently listed the entire contents of a supermarket, minus the food, and sold a yacht for the state of Maryland for $275,100.
"Take coffee equipment and mixers - a good operator in flusher economic times would buy those new," Sherman says. "When times are tough, they save money and buy it in the aftermarket."
From everything Sherman sees, the aftermarket for used business stuff is turbocharged. For that matter, the economy is exactly why Maryland went through Sherman and eBay to sell the governor's yacht. The state needs cash to offset its budget deficit.
In a year of lives lost at war and jobs lost to a difficult economy, of a crisis of faith in two institutions - mutual funds and the North American electrical grid - that previously seemed unshakeable, judiciousness took hold.
At the beginning of 2003, BMWs, Gucci and Prada reigned supreme on eBay (EBAY). All were among the 10 most-searched terms. Last year, the No. 1 search was for Gucci.
Here at the end of 2003, the most-searched items have shifted to Fords, anything pink (forget which designer), and gold (the kind you store in a wall safe as a hedge against geopolitical or economic disaster).
There are many ways to analyze 2003. You can sift through major news events. You can chart best-selling books and top-rated TV shows. You can dissect the stock market. But if you want the gestalt of America - the unified essence of this nation at this time - there might be no better place to turn than the massive databases that run eBay.
There sits a repository of culture and commerce unlike any before it. No executive decides what eBay sells. Instead, millions of individuals post items on the Web site in response to shifting nuances in the marketplace. Because it is so fluid, the site captures the collective mood and unique extremes of the 86 million people who use it.
"EBay is the perfect manifestation of everything the Internet makes possible," says Aliza Sherman, a Web pioneer now teaching and writing in Laramie, Wyo. "It is for and by the people. It is organic."
So USA TODAY came here to eBay's campus, where the lobby features a Pez dispenser collection and conference rooms have names like Fiestaware and Matchbook, and asked the company's computer wizards to cut the site's data every which way, looking for trends and oddities that help define the year we're leaving behind.
Of course, it's not perfect. As much information as eBay collects, there's still a lot it doesn't yet know about its marketplace. The company is in the process of installing better ways to mine its data. At this point, conclusions are less an exact science and more artful extrapolation. Using eBay's data to find larger trends is a little like watching a movie trailer and trying to figure out the whole movie's story. Then again, people do that all the time.
In that spirit, some tidbits about 2003 from the eBay files:
• The Aug. 14 blackout in the Northeast shook confidence in the power grid. In the week after the blackout, sales of portable generators jumped 67% vs. the previous week. But it wasn't just a knee-jerk spike. Generator sales on eBay are running at an annualized rate of $12 million, up 191% over 2002. It seems we're sure another outage is coming, and we want to be ready.
• Wireless home computer networks have hit the mainstream. Sales on eBay of equipment for so-called Wi-Fi networks, which can let computers connect to the Internet wirelessly, have grown 243% over 2002. It is the hottest technology category.
• SARS scared the pants off a lot of people. At the height of the epidemic, in May, eBay's "protective masks" category shot up 118% for the month. Sellers were listing masks singly, by the box and by the pallet.
• People are just stinkin' weird. One listing offered to sell Paul McCartney's germs from a used tissue. After baseball fan Steve Bartman interfered with a pop foul ball in the Chicago Cubs' playoff series, someone tried to sell his personal contact information on eBay. (EBay pulled the listing.)
Currently, you can, if you wish, buy a kangaroo scrotum. It costs about $10.
Downshifting in vogue
Skulking through all the eBay data, though, is the mounting weight of persistent economic malaise.
Though government numbers show the economy is rebounding after more than two years of doldrums, the eBay economy suggests something different. In fact, it seems to show a lag effect. People and companies downshifted as 2003 wore on.
For instance, eBay tracks searched words, which in turn are indicative of what buyers are looking for. Word searches for all of 2002 reflect a society still spending freely. Among the top 10 searches for the year were BMW, Louis Vuitton, Prada and Coach.
Similar terms dominated the top 10 into early 2003, until August, when there was a sudden shift. The Iraq war was dragging on. Companies were still cutting jobs and keeping raises flat. The blackout hit. California was in political chaos with its recall vote. And just then the luxury names dropped off eBay's top 10, replaced by more mundane words such as Ford, Chevy and diesel.
In September, "salvage" made it to the top 10.
Meanwhile, the economy drove individual sellers to eBay, hoping to make extra cash in tough times. In July, Bill and Peterene Stanhope of Pembroke, Mass., listed a 14-acre island they owned off the coast of Maine. Bill's importing business was suffering, as was Peterene's business of making bookmarks. They needed to sell the island, which they'd bought years earlier, to make ends meet.
For similar reasons, eBay's industrial products market took off in 2003. As an example, doctors and dentists, squeezed by insurance companies, turned to eBay in 2003 to buy medical equipment. In general, medical professionals are wary of buying used equipment. But the category is up more than 100% over last year.
"I don't see any huge economic recovery," says Neal Sherman, whose company, The Advantage Group, uses eBay to liquidate goods for companies and public entities. It recently listed the entire contents of a supermarket, minus the food, and sold a yacht for the state of Maryland for $275,100.
"Take coffee equipment and mixers - a good operator in flusher economic times would buy those new," Sherman says. "When times are tough, they save money and buy it in the aftermarket."
From everything Sherman sees, the aftermarket for used business stuff is turbocharged. For that matter, the economy is exactly why Maryland went through Sherman and eBay to sell the governor's yacht. The state needs cash to offset its budget deficit.