Imagine this:
You’re at an auction, sitting in the front row, bidding on a nice 1080p, LCD, 47″ HDTV. It sells for $1000, but is currently up for a mere $30. The day’s been going slowly, though, as each offer increases the bid by only a penny. But, with patience, the auction begins to wind down. 10 seconds left… 5 seconds… then another bid comes it, raises the price by a penny, and 20 more seconds are added onto the auction. And this happens over and over for days. And, oh yeah, each bid you make costs 75 cents.
This is the idea behind Swoopo, a new auction site that offers some tantalizing bargains for anyone who’s patient enough to figure out how things work and how best to bid on an item. While it may take days before the auction ends for real, it can pay off. The aforementioned TV sold for just over $300 recently (you can watch it in action now if you’d like). They sell laptops, MacBooks, cameras, and even gift certificates. Since each bid costs 75 cents but only raises the price by a penny or a dime, Swoopo presumably makes a nice bit of money even if the item sells for 70% off. Pretty ingenius, really. Read a little more about how it works.
But I don’t think I have the patience for it.
Posted in Technology
Steam June 2, 2009, 12:13 pm
It really is an ingenious idea. Having items on bid for cheap prices sure is tantalizing. And even though this is a positive review for the site a lot of people still trying to create a bad image when it really isn’t the site’s fault to begin with. Bidders were never really forced to bid. And yea, do read on how it really works before participating.