Came accross your interesting website and a funky name. But I did not understand your payment mechanism. Currently if I click on the participate, I get to a page hosted by WujWuj where I have to enter my details for payments. Then how is that I am paying directly to retailer just like I can do for instant buying from retailer’s site. Great to have your comments. Overall this thing rocks.

John O’Brien – Twangu (http://fb.twangu.com)

We have been heads down for sometime on building out a Facebook application, Twangu (http://fb.twangu.com) that does something very similar to eSwarm and others – and I just popped my head up to see chatter on wujwuj, etc.

Looks like it will be a fun year of competition as we all look to on-board vendors and buyers for similar businesses.

At Twangu, our focus is to allow buyers to leverage their social network to come together as a team for group purchases – even allowing teams to include multiple items or custom terms (i.e. We each want an Ipod Touch with the Applecare warranty, etc). And we facilitate the transaction from n buyers to a single vendor.

Good luck to everyone…
John O’Brien – Twangu – http://fb.twangu.com – http://www.twangu.com

If this model fails for some retail items, perhaps it will continue to work well for customized items, i.e. a thousand mugs with “Yes We Can!” on it…

Love the concept. However, when I buy something online, 99% of the time, I want to buy & complete my purchase right away…..not wait to see if others will join the group. It’s definitely got potential.

they paid more than 15k for that 1k.

Online Shopping in particular is an area where changes in the business, technology and mass psychology can cause old ideas to recreate themselves and succeed. The classical example is SmartShopper – a downloadable shopping assistand browser add-on. While previous attempts at such software have failed – from R-U-Sure to the Nextag toolbar – have either gone belly-up or turned into a pure-web initiative, SmartShopper was started as a spin-off out of Hotbar, later on acquired by Zango and to date is one of the most successful revenue-generating software tools in the field of online shopping assistance.

So this initiative should be judged by its own merit, and in the current technology/business environment, and not just by identifying with similar initiatives that have failed before.

Do this:
1. Be like Woot + FatWallet, but with “mobs” that people can job. A 20% off Zappos mob, a 20% nordstrom mob. You know how Zappos gives you 20% affiliate commission for every sale? Offer that plus a bit more (to differentiate from FatWallet and other rebate sites).

Have comments and stuff…

“Finally, it is still unproven that people will embed a widget that will drive their friends to a site like this. Or post to their feeds.”

You are right. however, we have created a reason (the more the cheaper) for people to share them.

Thats what we believe and hope it will happen.

The xbox 360 was a bad example, since the electronics market is a tough market.

However, my above example used on various other markets would IMO do great.
Heck, beef jerky online sellers can do wonders with this… selling jerky via widgets on facebook?? yum!

thanks

However, let me point out some problems:
1 – if I’m a small fry trying to compete in a price market with Best Buy and Walmart, this won’t help me. I’m going to take negative margin on hot product that I could sell for full price
2 – I’m going to attract people to my site who have the expectation that I’m stupid enough to sell things below cost – so I’m not attracting a customer that will help me
3 – all of the other crap in my store is still more expensive than Best Buy or Walmart
4 – the fastest way for me to never get any more Xbox 360’s is to break price. There’s a reason why they generally sell for the same wherever you go

So really, what you’re offering me the merchant is the potential for some SEO juice because I’m giving away product. I’m competing with full price sales on my own site (I’ve made it harder to sell Xbox 360’s at $199 on my site).

If this is the core thesis, I continue to be very skeptical.

Finally, it is still unproven that people will embed a widget that will drive their friends to a site like this. Or post to their feeds.

You are absolutely right.
The electronics market is a very tough market, although we believe that we can help you compete with the bigger boys via our application, chances are corporations like walmart and best buy will always be cheaper.

however, there are markets were our application would compliment many products nicely.
for example, travel, software, higher end electronics, custom auto parts, clothing, even music.

We help retailers reach the *undecided shoppers* by enticing them into joining the cheapest phase (assuming its a good deal). these shoppers get to the deal via twitter, facebook ..etc
P.S: The deal can not be longer than 10 days and as short as 1 day.
Its a “short viral sale” I think if implemented correctly it is better than advertising.

I would even suggest a retailer losing on “hot deal” would get his website more attention than advertising, so this “loss” is essentially an advertising cost.

I am going to make this *untested* hypothetical, assuming you own a gaming retail website and offered 100 xbox 360s for $149.99 ($50 cheaper then anyone online) thats a $20- $30 per unit depending on the wholesale cost. thats around $2500 loss.
I would wager that hundreds if not 1000s of gaming blogs and forums will be buzzing about this sweet deal and your shop for weeks.
Blogs and forums as we all know are cached to be seen forever. Google ads are not.

This has never been tested and it is completely my opinion.