<P> Reportedly, eBay was simply a side hobby for Omidyar until his Internet service provider informed him he would need to upgrade to a business account due to the high volume of traffic to his website . The resulting price increase (from $30 / month to $250) forced him to start charging those who used eBay, and was not met with any animosity . It resulted in the hiring of Chris Agarpao as eBay's first additional employee to handle the number of checks coming in for fees . </P> <P> Jeffrey Skoll was hired as the first new president of the company in early 1996 . In November 1996, eBay entered into its first third - party licensing deal, with a company called Electronic Travel Auction, to use SmartMarket Technology to sell plane tickets and other travel products . Growth was phenomenal; in January 1997 the site hosted 2,000,000 auctions, compared with 250,000 during the whole of 1996 . </P> <P> The company officially changed the name of its service from AuctionWeb to eBay in September 1997 . Originally, the site belonged to Echo Bay Technology Group, Omidyar's consulting firm . Omidyar had tried to register the domain name echobay.com, but found it already taken by the Echo Bay Mines, a gold mining company, so he shortened it to his second choice, eBay.com . </P> <P> In 1997 the company received $6.7 million in funding from the venture capital firm Benchmark Capital . </P>

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