Ebay hasn't been an auction site really ever. Today the vast majority of listings have turned it into a ghetto version of Amazon where you can get tons of awful Chinese junk with "Buy it Now" as your only option. For the few people that actually do forgo the direct pricing option, the vast majority set the reserve at the price they'd list it on Craigslist for (basically fair market value) and hope to get extra money for no reason.
The auction format only really existed for vehicle sales in my experience. Even there dealers have killed the functionality by butting out all the private sellers. I wish there was some online option that only allowed private sellers, even Craigslist is succumbing to the same disease.
That's pretty much how all the big mobile OS's handle multitasking save WebOS. Even if they keep processes running there isn't any real UI navigation that separates the running from the paused from the dead.
I really loved the WebOS cards UI. It's a shame it's dead, hopefully Android will move in that direction since they hired the head of WebOS's UI design team.
Of those 10m users there are only 5 that I know. If they had opened G+ up to all current Gmail accounts and Apps accounts they could have made a huge impact, there was enormous buzz around my college campus (where everyone had an Apps for Education account) but nobody could get in. When FB opened itself up to non .edu accounts it had swept my school in weeks because there was no barrier to entry and people wanted to try it out. Even though there were far fewer users on FB then than G+ now you had social circles joining en masse creating a foundation for a usable network. For most younger people your group of friends likely joined all around the same time, which couldn't happen with G+.
Instead of universal limits on access, Google should have kept the first iteration a truly closed and internal beta then opened it up to everyone.
Facebook did blow up in select circles though right from the get-go. When it hit college campuses it spread like wildfire as there were no restrictions to entering and you could have all your close, daily contacts together in one place instantly. Google+ let me and 5 other friends in but prevented me from inviting others and now it's basically dead with the last post between any of us over a month old.
The overall number of users in the system isn't something important, it's how many users I know. A network with 10,000 users at Harvard will spread out much faster than one with 10m dotted around the US as it represents a contiguous userbase that is a solid foundation for social interaction.
The auction format only really existed for vehicle sales in my experience. Even there dealers have killed the functionality by butting out all the private sellers. I wish there was some online option that only allowed private sellers, even Craigslist is succumbing to the same disease.