Swoopo?

[Dien Rice]

Originally Posted by Ankesh

Have you seen:
http://www.swoopo.com/

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001196.html

Pure evil genius!

Hi Ankesh,

Wow... That's pretty amazing. Especially when you "crunch" the numbers!

I guess my question would be... will this business work long term? I could be wrong, but I'm guessing it won't... I think after the initial excitement of a "new thing" has died, and people realize how much they're spending, they'll desert Swoopo and go back to traditional auction sites like eBay.

I agree, it is a bit like gambling. But I think you can get similar excitement for "better rates" at traditional auction sites... Since at regular auction websites, the "excitement" of bidding is free (unless you win), compared to Swoopo, where each bid is 75 cents.

Of course I could be wrong in my prediction. Human behavior doesn't always make sense!

Thanks for posting about it!

- Dien

P.S. Another thing is - on Swoopo, there seems to be no rational reason to bid on anything until there is about 1 or 2 seconds to go. On Swoopo, "sniping" is the only strategy that would make any sense. It's especially true since bidding is quite expensive (75 cents a bid), whereas on other auction sites (like eBay), bidding is free. On Swoopo, your 75-cent bid has no value unless you win, and you only have a realistic chance of winning if you snipe.

I joined another site similar to this called ThePerfectBid.com
I haven't made any bids because I have a problem getting past the fact that I have to pay per bid and every time a bid is placed the price on the item goes up just 10 cents and whoever is the bidder that placed the final bid, wins the auction . They have an autobidder that will make your bids for you in the last 10 seconds of the auction so you don't waste any bids. But the site says that any bid made a couple of minutes prior to the end of an auction adds 20 seconds to the auction. So I am guessing everyone will set up an autobid, all the bids will be made within the last 10 seconds of the close of the auction adding 20 seconds for every bid and the winner will be whoever is the luckiest and gets the last bid. It seems to me that it is just a small lottery. Maybe I am just missing the big picture.

Scott,

Here's what you're missing...

Let's say you it costs $1 to bid - I went to the site and couldn't see anywhere where it said how much other than "a small fee". And you set your autobidder to bid in the last 10 seconds.

So do 15 other people.

The winner will then be the one who said they were willing to bid the most, or who has money left in their bid account. Provided there is not someone else placing single bids now and then as well until all autobidders have expired their accounts.

Plus, on auto bid, you have no say in When you bid will be placed, as far as the order of bidding in comparison to other autobidders. So autobidder could easily wipe out you an another bidder before using the funds from two other autobidders to bid until their funds are dry, and then moving to another two autobidders. And so on.

And if you think, "I'll single bid" and "wait", then you need to ask yourself How Much money you're willing to flush down this toilet before you say Enough and just stop?

Think after you've blown $10 on bidding and have nothing to show, you'll just walk? Or will you think "I can't let that money be wasted" and keep bidding?

I watched Swoopo and some people bid over 300 times - within the last 15 seconds - before winning. Spending $225 on bidding to have the privilege of them paying more for the item.

If you say to someone... hey, I'm selling tickets in a raffle for this Thing, want to buy $200 worth and if you win you can then pay me more money for the thing... think you'll have many takers?

People are sucked in like they are sucked into lotteries because they tell themselves... someone has to win.

That's right. Someone does have to win. How much money per Auction and how many Auctions are you willing to loose money on before you decide it's a bad joke. At what point will you pull the plug in total spendings with no reward? $100? $500? $1,000?

Michael Ross

[Ankesh]

I think it'll be there long term too. Because of greed.

People will have bad opinions about swoopo (I've not read even 1 good opinion about it yet). But when they see an ipod going for $2 - they will bid.

And swoopo only needs two people to place a bid per product to get a race going...