We covered Berkeley-based Hotswap last month during its pre-launch stage. Next week they launch officially and open up the site with full functionality.
Hotswap is targeting the $370 billion/year U.S. used car market with a free, video-focused classifieds site. Listings are optimized to allow users to quickly upload video of the car with a camera phone or other low end video equipment.
Both normal users and car dealers can upload listings. The company has inked a deal with Red McCombs Automotive, which will upload all of their used cars to the site. Other business development deals are being negotiated now.
The company says sellers were very happy during the beta testing period and reported very high sell-through rates.
They’ve raised around $1 million in capital from Kinsey Hills Group, the investors behine Scribd and others. Hotswap competes with Vast, eBay, Edgeio (a company that I co-founded) and many others.
I am always surprised when I see a video startup that actually solve a real problem. This is a really great ideas, when buying a car online you never get a real “feel” for what you’re getting into.
This isn’t any sort of substitute for kicking the tires and taking a test drive, but it would make me feel a lot better about following up than a static picture. I wish these folks the best of luck.
Are you saying that the used car advertising market is $370 billion dollars per year?
They are targeting the used car advertising market…not the used car market.
not bad…
this video thing may work.
but instead of just displaying videos…it should be mandatory for either the owners or dealers to show themselves/talk about the car as it’s being recorded.
that would be a strong selling point for the site.
Out of the three competitor links two point back here(tc), while the third points directly to the competitor’s website. I wonder why!
This is a very clever idea - the video classifieds. People will always prefer video to images especially with used car ads.
If think CarMax should start thinking about its business model. There is new sheriff in town
Yea, it would be useful if the seller had to talk about the car. I wonder if they could do this in conjunction with Carfax?
not bad…
this video thing may work.
but They are targeting the used car advertising market…
anyway , thanks for the post.
I think video advertising is definitely the future. Who is willing to pay money for a easily touched up photo and a decieving description? Also, what would you rather do, just read car specs of a NEW version of the car, or see what you will actually get?
I made a website friendrequestr.com, not just for cars, but to help people promote videos on youtube.
Video advertising will stand strong.
I predict failure. For 5 reasons.
1) Not everyone has a video camera
2) Lack of content..why would I go there to look for a car…if they only have 1 or 2 cars? I’d rather go to a place like Autotrader where everyone lists and looks.
3) Not everyone wants to spend the 10 minutes talking about their car…and frankly I fail to see what you can show on video, which you can’t show in pictures?
4) You’ve been able to embed video on ebay for a while…so nothing new here
5) Videos look like crap and really don’t show the details. I’d rather see a big ass 5 megapixel picture, than a tiny 1.3 megapixel video
a new way of advertisement, wow, impressive!
Andrew,
1. 63 million units sold in 2004 (who knows what they are up to now)
2. valid claim
3. then they should only spend 30sec. and they don’t have to talk if they dont want to, it seems like video is just to show things work. Plus it also appears they do have nice HD pics to compliment the vids.
4. Ebay is an auction service. This appears to be an entirely different model
5. Umm, how about seeing both to make sure you don’t get riped off on your product purchase.
I’m not saying this Hotswap thing will work or not, I’m just saying I’d rather see a video of something I’m interested in with a picture as apposed to the alternative.
6. You appear to be uneducated.
@Dave
The target is the dollar value of total used car sales of $370 billion, not the advertising, which amounts to about $4 billion.
Andy - I think it is unfair to say Andrew “6. You appear to be uneducated.”.
I did an exact similar site a year ago and it did not fly. You say.. 63 million camera phones have been sold, but not all of them are being used to take videos. In fact, even those that are used to take videos are not in good quality to display a product that is at least few thousand dollars.
Also people who are buying car would like to see the car in person and pictures for them are sufficient and most of the time pictures have a lot more quality than videos from camera phones. Becuase pictures by itself are sufficient, a lot of sellers do not want to spend the time to take a video of their car, not to mention, they do not understand the purpose of taking a video of thier car when they can take pictures. What to video?..one customer ask me…Video me driving the car?..whats the point of that? You can’t hear too much plus…you can feel and hear thing when you test drive.
Imagine if you have 400 cars in your lot…you have to spend a lot of video’ing the cars when pictures itself might bring the same amount of customers. If videos are a great car sellers, why aren’t the big car makers using videos on their website. Most of them use “3D” photos.
I am saying all these through first hand experience. But props for this company to be featured on TC
I’m sorry, but what is the business model here again?
you never know. youtube’s initial vision was to put videos on ebay classifieds.
Chris.
“If videos are a great car sellers, why aren’t the big car makers using videos on their website.”
Because they didn’t have the ability to until only a few years ago and the industry is slowly adopting.
Hotswap and ebizautos are the only people who I know of who are financed and doing it well.
Hey Michael,
Can you consider going back to linking directly to the site covered in your articles, instead of making us go through crunchbase? I don’t mind a crunchbase link in addition, but when I just want to go to the site itself, it’s annoying to have to go through crunchbase only to wait for it to load and then click through. thanks
haha Crunchbase owns.
oh I see now, the screenshot image itself links to hotswap… ok that works for me
now if people will just stop using those annoying “snapshot” things!
Is the web 2.0 bubble about to burst??? There’s nothing unique about this company or concept that’s worthy exposing on this blog. What’s to stop craigslist or any other classifieds site from allowing users to upload videos???
#18 - you can’t blame Michael - he needs to build links for his directory and since no one else will link to it - he has to do it - sure it pisses everyone else off - but getting more pageviews for the advertisers to keep up his ad rate is what’s important here - and that’s what happens. I can’t fight anymore to get them to remove the crapunchbase links but maybe you can. It’s stupid - and what it does is remove any link power back to the site who gave him (i bet) an exclusive to begin with. but whatever, this site is older than a web 1.0 webvan. poor heather - at least she has a fancy necklace!
How come every link goes to crunchbase except for edgeio
#22 - cuz edgeo is a crunch property - they give those full linkage, others get crunchbase linkage.
brilliant.
maybe change website name though, sounds like a porn site.
Just use MSN for goodness sakes!
http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
While we are there. If anyone is looking for easier image hosting..this is the way to go.
http://www.imageblox.com
@aandrian: The name’s great - works for them as an auto site now while leaving open the possibility of expanding into other verticals as time goes on.
Just wrote a short piece on the Hotswap model and how it will develop in the future. Or at least how it should develop if they don’t want to fail. The short answer is to focus on the dealers. Check it out at moseskagan.com.
This is really nice way to see at a classified .. it looks very lively and encourages one to browse more ads (hoping they have a nice internet connection) as compared to dull text links.
This is a great idea. Hotswap is going to rock! It will also open up the floodgates for other video classified sites…
HotSwap, the site to visit if you want to see lots of used-car salesmen.
Andrew is right about the hotswap project regarding cars, I have a hard time seeing dealers really taking the time to video each car.
However, no one has commented on Hotswaps compression technology that is really making the video stand out. The videos do load very quick and the cars may just be a way for these guys to launch there video compression for other sites!
Can I use it to sell my used wife?
oooh, g…that’s wicked…there’s actually another website out there that launched video classifieds in August–www.listasaurus.com…and you aren’t limited to just used cars, they have real estate, matchmaking, stuff for sale, etc. Also, they PAY you to list your ads (even better than free!), which is also v. cool. and videos are required, but an option.
check it out at Listasaurus.com…
SEE!! LOOK!! THE CAR GOES FORWARD AND BACKWARD!! SEE!! SEE!!
I’m a part of video classifieds startup that hails from Boston. Check out http://www.imoondo.com
Besides cars you can find a date, check out a restaurant and much more! I really believe that video is the best way to buy anything online.
I think you should look at the company I work for spynbuy.com
It is a real animal! The best of the video classified world and not to mention getting alot of news too. The founders started with 100K and have a national ad campaign coming in a few weeks
hey imoondo guys how are you! Nice to see you up late too….
Imoondo has a great site also. I think niche is fine but the voyeur in me likes to see all sorts of things for sale……
Duhhh….. no way to sort by price, mileage…. what a stupid function to miss!
and no way to search by location.
oh my bad… now I see the zip code.