eBay to B.

For much of e-commerce’s short history, business-to-consumer and business-to-business ventures have been poles apart. Consumer sites have traditionally been the celebrities of the internet economy, feted in the national press when they’re hot, and picked over in gleeful obituaries when they fail. The b2b sector, on the other hand, has thrived, but is a whole lot less glamorous. Sites that provide marketplaces for companies within an industry to trade goods are no-frills, often literally nuts-and-bolts tools for boosting productivity.