DISQUS

Vaibhav Domkundwar - webvapors · 3 years ago

Its unbelievable and exciting to see a lot of plays targeted an addressing some real physical world issues. Swapping is generating a lot of different players - almost all in the last 6-12 months - and each with a slight different angle.

I love the space but do not agree that a pure barter model can be exciting for users for too long. Barter and swapping is based on the fundamental assumption that users will share what they *do not* want anymore and that builds an inventory of things that may not be most appealing to the broader potential user base. The second big point is the absence of real world currency - adding currency, I feel, can make a big difference.

billie -soon to be retired - g · 3 years ago

flipadisc...not to be confused with flipabiatch, the ho swapping site.

horrible name.

fred · 3 years ago

barterbee.com is the best so far IMHO

cya

SomeGuy · 3 years ago

For music CDs lala is becoming quite a slick site. Barterbee is also looking polished.

Bman · 3 years ago

Flipadisc is free. Barterbee charges $1 per swap, plus, you need to have enough points. But, I can see how Flipadisc could potentially collapse under it's own weight because users will continually list only the junk they don't care about. That being said, I did find many music CD's and movie DVD's that I wouldn't mind getting!

Jay Dub · 2 years ago

Swapping has some significant advantages when related to this type of media. Books, DVDs, CDs and Videogames are unique in that once consumed (used) they have low (negligible) intrinsic value to the current owner but high value (on par with brand new items) with owners who have not consumed them. Because of this, swapping is a more efficient mechanism than using currency.

Once one has read a book, or mastered a videogame, or watched a movie, and exhausted it's economic utility for one's self, one would gladly trade it for another unread book, unplayed game, or unwatched DVD even if those items are pre-owned. To do so easily and seamlessly will create a broad secondary market for these items.

Alternatively, to sell and then repurchase similar media has much more overhead in terms of transaction costs, and generally doing so erodes some of the economic utility (either to a middle man, fraudulent transactions, Ebay costs, finding a buyer and seller, etc).

I think swapping, and in particular Swaptree given their unique model, multi-way swapping algorithm, and mixed media types has the potential to be a Very Big Thing.