Success Quote by Meg Whitman

Whitman’s line lands like a cold splash of balance-sheet reality on the warm bath of early social media hype. In the glow of Facebook’s “tremendous success,” she refuses to confuse attention with revenue, drawing a hard distinction between places people hang out and places people reliably buy. That contrast is the point: eBay didn’t just tack on message boards; it fused trust, identity, and repeat interaction to a transaction. Community wasn’t the product, it was the lubricant.

The subtext is defensive and strategic. As eBay’s chief, Whitman is protecting an older internet thesis: commerce is sticky because it creates measurable value, while “community” can be a mirage if it never crosses the checkout line. Her phrasing, “anchored in commerce,” implies gravity. Without a transaction at the center, a platform can drift into entertainment, gossip, or status signaling - powerful, yes, but hard to monetize without breaking the spell.

Context matters: this comes from an era when social networks were exploding and everyone was asking how to turn millions of users into billions of dollars. Whitman’s skepticism anticipates the next decade’s awkward experiments: f-commerce tabs, “buy” buttons, sponsored posts, influencer storefronts. The brilliance of the quote is its challenge, not its certainty. She’s not saying community can’t become a marketplace; she’s warning that the direction of conversion isn’t symmetrical. Moving from buying to bonding is easier than moving from bonding to buying, because the latter risks turning a social space into a sales floor - and people notice when the vibe changes.