What's in Store for EBay?

This is what we know about eBay's current state of affairs based on recent news: a) CEO Meg Whitman is apparently following Mitt Romney on the campaign trail; b) John Donahoe, head of eBay's marketplace division, has been fingered as a potential CEO successor, and he's complaining to anyone who will listen that the site looks like a flea market; and c) eBay users are mad as hell and they're writing to the New York Times to complain about it.

From where we're sitting, it looks pretty chaotic. eBay's CEO is out playing politics; one of the highest-ranking executives is publicly trashing the business; and customers are apparently planning a revolt. There are roughly 248 million registered users on eBay -- and while not all of them are going to be happy, the company's listings fell 3 percent during the first nine months of 2007, which indicates that a huge chunk of its customer base is taking its business elsewhere.

It's a funny thing, though: Shares of eBay are holding up fine in what has been a fairly shaky market. The stock is up 6 percent year-to-date. And while consumer sentiment seems deeply negative, investors are pretty mixed on the matter.

"I think that there's an increasingly divided view of eBay's fortunes," says Derek Brown, an analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald. "There are some, like myself, who believe the company is far from fixing its problems. And there are others who believe they are well on their way to fixing their problems."

Steve Jurvetson, venture capitalist (featured in the above photo) and managing director at Draper Fisher Jurvetson seems to fall into the latter category.

"I think the eBay for services will one day be a bigger opportunity than the eBay for physical goods . . .," Jurvetson told EPICENTER. "Skype lets them get into a really big business; it is early days still for Skype's potential. Wifi dual-mode phones are a key next step... Skype on PCs was an accident. It was always designed for mobility... And a trillion dollars of global telecom services are ripe for restructuring."