Pierre Morad Omidyar is an entrepreneur renowned for launching the eBay auction site. With this online bidding venture, he revolutionized e-commerce.
The history of eBay dates back to September 4th, 1995 when Omidyar created an online service called ‘Auction Web’ on his personal website. It was intended to help people list items for auction. The attempt was so successful, that soon he opened a separate site, and named it ‘eBay’.
The growth of eBay was such that Omidyar had to quit his job, and devote himself fully to it. In 1998, he was named the Chairman of eBay, and its services spread across other countries. By the end of that year, the site had around two million users across the globe. It also fetched the founder a huge fortune. Thus, at the age of 31, Omidyar was a billionaire.
However, Omidyar’s life was not restricted to technology alone. He had an interest in journalism too owing to which he launched the ‘Honolulu Civil Beat’, an investigating news service. In 2013, it collaborated with ‘The Huffington Post’, and launched ‘Huff Post Hawaii’ in Hawaii, and in 2014, another journalism venture named ‘First Look Media’.