Swoopo get more legit … sort of
August 29th, 2009 | by mbhunter |Saw some recent retweets of my post on why you should stay far, far, far away from Swoopo (thanks to @SFBoater and @BidzillaDOTcom) and it reminded me of an important change that Swoopo had made recently.
A quick recap of the characteristics that made Swoopo (before the change, anyway) little more than thinly-veiled gambling:
- You bought the right to bid up front.
- Auctions started low, and each bid incremented the price only a small amount, less than what the bidder paid for the right to bid.
- Each bid pushed the auction end 20 seconds (or so) into the future (up to a month, when the auction ends for sure). This rendered sniping irrelevant.
- Since there was only one winner of that auction, everyone else bidding lost what they paid for the bids.
Recently, Swoopo introduced the “Swoop It Now” feature. If it sounds like eBay’s Buy It Now feature, then that’s basically what it is. Up to one hour after the auction’s end, you can buy items for a set price. Not just for a set price above and beyond what you’ve sunk into bidding, but a set price, period. Swoopo will discount your Swoop It Now price by the amount that it cost you to buy the bids you’ve spent in the auction (up to the amount of the item).
This makes the whole process quite a bit less “gambly” because you go in knowing that you can always cut bait and buy the item. If you bid at the right time and get the item for a 92% discount, well hey, jolly jiggles for you, but you no longer have to be concerned about throwing your bid money down the drain.
At least, that would be the rational way to think about Swoopo auctions. If you’ve done your research and if the price they’re offering looks reasonable, and you were going to buy the item anyway, then there’s little wrong with playing Swoopo. It’s when you’d buy it only at a steep discount — or don’t really think about whether you even really want what’s offered — that it becomes dangerous.
Overall, this looks like Swoopo putting its ear to the ground and making itself more legitimate before it becomes too well-known how much money it’s raking in.
(Oh, was that casino parlance I just used?)
Anyway, do you Swoopo? Will this change make you more likely to Swoopo, or will you still stay far away?
One Response to “Swoopo get more legit … sort of”
By Shamoon Siddiqui on Sep 11, 2009 | Reply
The Swoop It Now feature is really interesting because it gives bidders a chance to use their bids even if they don’t win. However, this shift in business model indicates that the original model was not entirely sustainable and therefore had to be changed at some point. As the Founder of a Swoopo-competitor, I’m glad to see constant innovation in the “Penny Auction” space because it means we’re not all out of ideas.. at least not yet.
We innovated with PriceDrip by allowing people to essentially set their own tolerance levels by using the standard “highest bidder wins” model for an auction. I’m really excited to see what happens next =)