 eBay's Alan Lewis Joins Auctiva
 The creator of the eBay Desktop tool Alan Lewis has joined third-party vendor Auctiva to work on its off-eBay ecommerce Platform. Alan had somewhat famously blogged about eBay's problems last fall after he had left the company, describing eBay's management culture as dysfunctional.
In a blog post on Monday, Alan said he would be leading Auctiva's new effort to build a platform that powers new services for sellers off-eBay. "Auctiva has a vision for online commerce that I can get behind."
Among the reasons he lists for joining Auctiva is the fact that the company has a flat organizational structure that lets him report directly to the CEO. He wrote, "This contrasts with a previous employer where the CEO was (no exaggeration) my boss's boss's boss's boss's boss's boss."
Alan is attending eBay's Developer Conference this week in San Jose representing Auctiva, which is an eBay Certified Provider.
It's interesting to note that while third-party eBay vendors who supported larger merchants began supporting multiple marketplaces such as Amazon.com years ago, both Auctiva and Vendio, which serve smaller sellers, have come out only recently with multi-channel storefronts.
It shows that vendors close to eBay realize they can no longer support themselves by serving eBay sellers alone, as eBay is intent on becoming an online Costco.
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