One of the recurring themes of this blog is the power of the vertical market. We see over and over again how a powerful business model becomes dominant and then new ventures soon appear offering "vertical" tangents of the business model. eBAY's move on Stub Hub is a perfect example.

eBAY was created and became a sensation. Then hundreds of vertical offshoots of the eBAY business model were created to specialize in focused areas. Stub Hub of course chose tickets. And Stub Hub succeeded wildly as the founders in a few short years were able to sell the business for over $300 million.

Now that eBAY has purchased Stub Hub I would imagine that they will buy more and more vertical auction sites covering many focused topics.

On the technology side we have been watching this practice over and over again. Cisco is a perfect example in this space. Cisco has been buying up vertical technology businesses (successfully) for years. And Google and Yahoo have been grabbing verticals as well.

I have linked to my various entries about Stub Hub - note particularly my first reference to it on 1 July 2004.