There is a huge opportunity for swapping goods and services. Trillions of dollars flow through swaps (and I dont mean interest rate swaps) of books, music, movies, games, skis, kids clothes, gift cards and many more categories every year. It’s a social experience – you likely tend to swap with friends, family or colleagues in clubs or groups; people you trust.
The nice thing is that swapping tends to be pretty easy, too. You have something. You need something. The other party is in the same boat. The swap happens.
So it’s no surprise that at Swaptree, we are onto this big idea of enabling the “Swap Economy.” We are tapping into several powerful forces that can be catalysts for the Swap Movement: sensible consumption, conserving our planet and tapping into the social web.
It is all about the user experience. We must strive to add value to that simple and safe swapping opportunity that you have with your family and friends, while adding the scale of Amazon and networking of Facebook. It is a tall order but it is our mission. We are working on it. We intend to become the Swapping platform for the world.
Today we made a stride toward this. After a few months looking at how to introduce swapping to visitors of our web site – without forcing them to join immediately – we launched the opportunity for visitors to actually give Swaptree a test drive. This test drive allows a visitor to our site to enter the title of a book , CD, DVD or game and then Swaptree gives back to that visitor what they could get in any given swap on our site. I put in “On Golden Pond” in my test drive and Swaptree displayed that I could get 636 items for my movie. Not bad for a movie released back in 1981.
I have been a Swaptree user since August of 2008 and have swapped nearly 50 items since then. I know the service is powerful but the user experience has been a bit difficult. I am happy to invite all of you to give it a spin now. I hope that you can see the power of Swaptree much easier with the new release of this site. If you’re not already a member, I hope it motivates you to then join and start swapping.
This is just the beginning of many additional things to come in our Swap Economy. We’ll be adding new categories, more inventory, easier connectivity to Facebook and a many more things, as well, that will make your swap experience spectacular. Simply put: this is a cool time to join the Swap Movement.
Check it out. Give it a test drive and let me know what you think, because as I say above, it is all about the user experience.
Have a Happy 4th of July. Happy Swapping too!
Jeff Bennett
Swap.com Mobile is a free iPhone is app that lets you scan items into your HAVE and WANT lists, manage your account, see what you can get for your stuff, and participate in swaps.
