The new "losing bidders can apply bids against the cost of the item" is just plausible deniability for their ultimate business model, which is selling 100 people the same Wii.
If they end up selling 100 people the same five Wiis (1 at a deep discount, 4 at retail), it is still the same business model from the perspective of 95% of the participants of the transaction, who end up spending a lot of money but get no Wii.
I refuse to call them an auction site because that is just sheep's clothing. Their model has absolutely nothing intrinsically auction-like about it -- take a look at their "auctions" for CASH in which the putative "bid price" will never actually be paid by anyone. It just exists to sucker more people into paying scam participation fees.
Edit: Maybe there's an explanation for this but it still seems fishy to me.
How is it possible that the same people placed the same bids (in the same order) and end up with exactly the same amount for two different items in two different countries?
What is the probability of this happening? This means that even if they were all following these two items and placing the bids in the same order, nobody else outside of this group has placed a bid.
He calls it evil but doesn't provide much justification other than what he assumes people already believe.
In the interest of philosophical discussion... why is maximizing profit using knowledge of consumer behavior "evil" so to speak?
If someone uses their available knowledge and decides to enter a swoopo auction, is it really much different than choosing to play at a casino even though we know the house is against us (gambling's existence is something that few outside government seem to have a problem with?)?
Is the major hang up that people can pay but not win? If this is known up front can someone provide the rationale behind this being "evil"?
Funnily enough I find that the debate over swoopo being evil seems to parallel the debate over spec work being evil (just different currencies involved).
Can someone point me to literature on the rational arguments for and against consumer protection?
In the interest of philosophical discussion... why is maximizing profit using knowledge of consumer behavior "evil" so to speak?
I wouldn't go as far as saying this auction idea is 'evil' but I personally feel it is morally dubious. This site was put together by probably quite talented people with knowledge of game theory. How are these people using their talent? To make the world a better place, to forward the human race or to take money off others who are more ignorant than themselves?
These auctions have losers who lose money and gain nothing. Maybe those who lose enjoy the chase. However, I personally wouldn't be comfortable working on a system such as this.
> In the interest of philosophical discussion... why is maximizing profit using knowledge of consumer behavior "evil" so to speak?
Because people can be deceived. Math is hard. If I were to belive Coding Horror, even Paul Erdos didn't understand the Monty Hall problem.
If you take profit on people's naivety, you're evil. Because every human being is ignorant about something. We're not perfect. We're not always right.
BTW, I'm in favour of gambling, when it's clearly marked as such. You don't get better at Swoopo by playing Swoopo, you only win by not playing it all. To say Swoopo labels itself as a system where luck does not play the main role is deceiveing.
everyone's mad they didn't think of it first. it's the most brilliant scam I've ever encountered, doubly so because you can make the case that it's not technically a scam.
Ahem, actually it's just a scam, in it's purest form. No, it doesn't qualify as gambling because your chance to win is not determined by luck but solely at the discretion of the people running the show.
Imagine you enter a casino and someone offers you the following game:
There's a red button, one push costs $1. Anyone may push as often as they want and can afford. If the button isn't pushed for one hour then the last person who had pushed receives $1000 USD (fixed).
Fine you may think, I'll come here at thanksgiving when nobody is around and push it then. Except that there's always this one sleazy guy lurking in the corner, even at thanksgiving, with that strangely swollen thumb and an seemingly unlimited budget...
Finally, I gave up when it became clear that Swoopo could make money faster than I could count it.
Two thoughts come to mind. First, it's a rigged game: don't start playing it. Second, people are going to clone this business model. Swoopo is simply one of the first-movers.
Text messages are totally a scam because of the markup factor... but Swoopo also has the lottery factor. That is the vast majority of people get NOTHING for their $10, $100, $1000. I don't understand why people are trying to defend it on a technicality. Yes, technically it may be legal, however it's ripping stupid people off left and right.
Text messages are a scam. Especially when the company also charges you that .15 when you receive a message without consenting to it. And when there are no alternatives and little price competition because it's commonly accepted practice in the industry to make a huge windfall off of texting.
I am neither a good programmer nor an expert in machine learning or whatever, but look - for each item they have a public bidding history with usernames. So,
1. Write a script that will pull this info once a second
2. Analyze it - You're interested in predicting when a person will quit bidding so that you can join the auction in the latest possible moment and win the item with a minimal number of bids. You have time series of each user's bids (with a distinction of whether they were made manually or automatically) and a dollar value of the item price.
I'm not a programmer either, but as someone with an econ undergrad degree going into grad school both the data/analysis and the method of obtaining it are really of interest to me. If anyone can point me in the right direction in terms of what I would need to create such a script I'd be willing to do the work and share the results here.
Sounds a lot like all the other press swoopo has got. While on the surface there new offer to allow the bidder to make up the difference for the item on lost bids seems like an improvement, there retail prices seem to be high enough to negate any benefit there is buying online over your local retailer.
These kind of sites were invented in the UK a few years ago. The idea is based on a practice where con artists set up similar kind of "auctions" in the real world (mainly in unused shops on London's Oxford street).
The hook is that as you walk past the shop you see that you have the chance to get a play station for $1. So, you and about 100 other people pay $1 with the hope of getting a play station. After everyone's put their money in then they "randomly" select 5 people in the audience and hand over the play station to them.
Of course after the show, the audience "plants" secretly give the play stations back. So, in essence they keep recycling the same play stations all day long and real punters keep paying $1 and not getting anything.
[+] [-] patio11|16 years ago|reply
If they end up selling 100 people the same five Wiis (1 at a deep discount, 4 at retail), it is still the same business model from the perspective of 95% of the participants of the transaction, who end up spending a lot of money but get no Wii.
I refuse to call them an auction site because that is just sheep's clothing. Their model has absolutely nothing intrinsically auction-like about it -- take a look at their "auctions" for CASH in which the putative "bid price" will never actually be paid by anyone. It just exists to sucker more people into paying scam participation fees.
[+] [-] gabrielroth|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cesare|16 years ago|reply
How is it possible that the same people placed the same bids (in the same order) and end up with exactly the same amount for two different items in two different countries?
http://www.swoopo.com/auction/apple-macbook-mb466ll-a-13-3-i... http://www.swoopo.de/auktion/msi-x-slim-x340-su3523-weiss-/1...
(The links above are provided in the followup).
What is the probability of this happening? This means that even if they were all following these two items and placing the bids in the same order, nobody else outside of this group has placed a bid.
[+] [-] brm|16 years ago|reply
In the interest of philosophical discussion... why is maximizing profit using knowledge of consumer behavior "evil" so to speak?
If someone uses their available knowledge and decides to enter a swoopo auction, is it really much different than choosing to play at a casino even though we know the house is against us (gambling's existence is something that few outside government seem to have a problem with?)?
Is the major hang up that people can pay but not win? If this is known up front can someone provide the rationale behind this being "evil"?
Funnily enough I find that the debate over swoopo being evil seems to parallel the debate over spec work being evil (just different currencies involved).
Can someone point me to literature on the rational arguments for and against consumer protection?
[+] [-] papaf|16 years ago|reply
I wouldn't go as far as saying this auction idea is 'evil' but I personally feel it is morally dubious. This site was put together by probably quite talented people with knowledge of game theory. How are these people using their talent? To make the world a better place, to forward the human race or to take money off others who are more ignorant than themselves?
These auctions have losers who lose money and gain nothing. Maybe those who lose enjoy the chase. However, I personally wouldn't be comfortable working on a system such as this.
[+] [-] inerte|16 years ago|reply
Because people can be deceived. Math is hard. If I were to belive Coding Horror, even Paul Erdos didn't understand the Monty Hall problem.
If you take profit on people's naivety, you're evil. Because every human being is ignorant about something. We're not perfect. We're not always right.
BTW, I'm in favour of gambling, when it's clearly marked as such. You don't get better at Swoopo by playing Swoopo, you only win by not playing it all. To say Swoopo labels itself as a system where luck does not play the main role is deceiveing.
[+] [-] calambrac|16 years ago|reply
Seriously, if you don't think of this as evil, what's your definition of evil?
gambling's existence is something that few outside government seem to have a problem with
Um, what planet are you from? At least 3 major world religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) regard gambling as evil.
[+] [-] pj|16 years ago|reply
See here! This is the problem with ads. You see ads, you click it, and you regret it. This author would be better off without ever having seen the ad.
Block ads. They are bad for you.
[+] [-] petercooper|16 years ago|reply
Unless you like to enjoy newspapers, television, free content sites, Spotify, or the like, of course.
[+] [-] randallsquared|16 years ago|reply
(For the record, I don't think it's a terrible thing or should be illegal, no matter how profitable.)
[+] [-] nazgulnarsil|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eli|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moe|16 years ago|reply
Imagine you enter a casino and someone offers you the following game:
There's a red button, one push costs $1. Anyone may push as often as they want and can afford. If the button isn't pushed for one hour then the last person who had pushed receives $1000 USD (fixed).
Fine you may think, I'll come here at thanksgiving when nobody is around and push it then. Except that there's always this one sleazy guy lurking in the corner, even at thanksgiving, with that strangely swollen thumb and an seemingly unlimited budget...
[+] [-] DanielBMarkham|16 years ago|reply
Two thoughts come to mind. First, it's a rigged game: don't start playing it. Second, people are going to clone this business model. Swoopo is simply one of the first-movers.
[+] [-] derefr|16 years ago|reply
I was pondering variations on Swoopo, and think I went and made it even worse: I would cross it with an MMORPG.
[+] [-] bemmu|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zaidf|16 years ago|reply
If this is a scam, so is, say, charging folks 15 cents to send a text message.
In both cases, the end company ends up making a windfall of money. In both cases the customer knows exactly what he is getting and agrees to it.
[+] [-] dasil003|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] padmapper|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raquo|16 years ago|reply
1. Write a script that will pull this info once a second
2. Analyze it - You're interested in predicting when a person will quit bidding so that you can join the auction in the latest possible moment and win the item with a minimal number of bids. You have time series of each user's bids (with a distinction of whether they were made manually or automatically) and a dollar value of the item price.
3. ...Profit!
Could this work?
[+] [-] JimmyL|16 years ago|reply
The author does some interesting pattern analysis of how auctions actually work, and concludes (roughly) that you can't beat BidButler.
[+] [-] eli|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] secret|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maukdaddy|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jemka|16 years ago|reply
http://www.swoopo.com/auction.html?cm_re=Homepage-_-Grid-_-1...
Let's hop on over to newegg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148...
Yikes. I think I'll tick to ebay for my auctions.
BTW, I can't figure out who pays the $73.20 for the 122 bids. Where those the bids of the user? Or was that total bids from everyone?
[+] [-] mildavw|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robryan|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jv2222|16 years ago|reply
The hook is that as you walk past the shop you see that you have the chance to get a play station for $1. So, you and about 100 other people pay $1 with the hope of getting a play station. After everyone's put their money in then they "randomly" select 5 people in the audience and hand over the play station to them.
Of course after the show, the audience "plants" secretly give the play stations back. So, in essence they keep recycling the same play stations all day long and real punters keep paying $1 and not getting anything.
[+] [-] dtf|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] profquail|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jimmyrcom|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] omarish|16 years ago|reply