When it comes to online auctions, most people think of the lengthy, generally unexciting (at least until the last few minutes) auctions found on eBay. But in the last year we’ve seen some more interesting action in the space — Swoopo is one site that comes to mind, but it is an “entertainment shopping” experience that has an element of gambling to it (you can walk away empty handed and still lose money). StuffBuff is a new site that’s taking a different approach: it’s looking to combine the real-time nature of sites like Twitter with traditional auction sites like eBay. The company made its debut in the TechCrunch50 Demopit, and is today launching in private beta. We’ve got 500 invites for TechCrunch readers. To join, use the invite code “TechCrunch”.
A standard StuffBuff auction (called a ‘Live Haggle’) looks quite similar to a chat room, with a few key differences. The top of the chat window shows a ‘time left’ indicator that lets you know when the auction ends, and there’s a bidding window below the chat box where you enter how much you’re willing to pay (entering a bid is considered binding). Whenever you create an auction, you’re responsible for staying active in the chat as viewers come online and bid and ask questions (because of this auctions only last a matter of hours or minutes, as opposed to the day or week-long auctions you’ll find on eBay). And because of the public nature of the chat everything is transparent — you don’t have to worry about back channel discussions.
Aside from the real-time nature of the auction, what sets StuffBuff apart from tradional auction sites is the potentially viral nature of their auctions. Any time you create an auction, you can embed it in your website to share with friends. Visitors will be able to bid on these auctions directly from your site (they’ll be able to use Facebook Connect or Twitter OAuth to sign up, though these aren’t implemented yet). Payments are done through Paypal’s payment platform.
StuffBuff also has a second kind of auction called ‘Blink’ that does have some similarities to Swoopo. The auction invites users to watch as the price of an item falls down over time. The more people watching, the faster the price falls, until someone pulls the trigger and buys the item. These can be embedded as well.
StuffBuff makes money by charging around 25-50 cents to set up an auction (which is substantially less than eBay), $1.50 to set a reserve, and then 5% of the final value. The pricing of the Blink auctions is still be determined.
StuffBuff has done some interesting things to help make creating auctions easier than on some other services. The site has a feature that lets you either plug in a USB barcode scanner or use your computer’s camera as one:Â point it at a product, and StuffBuff will enter it into your sellable inventory. When you’re ready to sell an item the site will try to pre-populate your auction’s details with known information about the item, like size and weight.
StuffBuff has an interesting idea, but there are are few obstacles that immediately come to mind. Founder Michael Langer says that he wants StuffBuff to be like “eBay 2.0″, explaining that he sees eBay’s 95% marketshare as an opportunity since that site hasn’t changed much in years. But launching an auction site isn’t easy — it’s going to take some time to get users to trust these embedded widgets enough to actually start handing money over to them. My other concern involves the real-time nature of the auctions. Because auctions only last a few hours, unless you have some mechanism to really spread them virally (say, through a popular Twitter account) it seems like it would be challenging to get more than a few people bidding, and even then they might well be your friends, who aren’t always the best people to do business with. That problem might go away once the site has a sizable user base that will expose your auctions to strangers, but StuffBuff needs to get over that initial hump.
Great name.
Phonetically sweet names are king.
Yes StuffBuff beat out our other option, eBoopo.cz.us
I just wonder also if there would be enough bidders within this timeframe. Also we need to consider the “around-the-clock” nature of internet, where people lives in different time zones and won’t be awake all the time to chat.
You can schedule the auctions in advance for a particular time and adjust the duration of the auction according to popularity.
Think of a rare collectors item promoted on a blog and the auction is embedded at the promoted time and then your off.
It has everything but the guy who talks really fast!
I like the chat idea and social features. What happen when users use social/chat in a bad ways like, team up, agree not to bid against each other and allow Bill to win it cheap because it’s bill turn to get cheap etc.
hmm.. interesting.. might be difficult to co-ordinate ALL bidders.. GREED always supersedes. There will be atleast ONE rebel who would want to snatch it without co-ordinating with others.
Jellyfish had a similar concept before they got acquired.
All auction sites need huge marketing budget in the initial days. It is like the chicken and egg problem. You need user interest for sellers to sell.. but again.. you need sellers for user interest.
Great idea though.. Good luck !!
Its an excellent question, we will ponder it.
We do hope the free market will rule StuffBuff and we will do our best to manage the fraudsters.
when a practical and much adopted real time human behavior is successfully produced online, it has a real chance of becoming a big success.
Blink is a copycat of http://www.rabattschlacht.de/
and rabattschlacht is a copycat of http://www.ricardo.de back in 1999
Gesundheit! Actually Blink! is a product where the price is what falls, not the time. $1 a minute or $1 a second based on how many watchers there are.
Didn’t find any stuff to bid on right away, and the interface is seems a bit buggy (got stuck after a few minutes).
We have more bugs then a rain-forest at the moment, we are squiching them as fast as we can! whch is also why we all auctions are simulated at the moment.
I will post a link to one in a few……..
Their best bet is an eBay buyout, but Meg Whitman just got grilled horribly for her Skype acquisition, something I think people at eBay envisioned to bring more real time features to the auction. This is slightly different so seems to have a fighting chance, but the corporate juggernauts don’t budge very well when it comes to new features. This is probably 10 years too early.
Hmm, best bet in my opinion is to have amazon and google bid over StuffBuff in a LiveHaggle auction (its only fair).
That would indeed be awesome!
We’re excited to see StuffBuff open & get featured on TechCrunch!
If you would like to read more about StuffBuff’s blink auction, entertainment shopping sites like Swoopo and more check out Penny Auction Watch: http://www.penn...-blink-auction/
Loving the fact that auctions link to the Amazon price!
Best wishes to everyone!
-PAW
Thanks -PAW
Sincerely,
Hoof
Would be nice if they allowed people to browse the site before joining… How many potential bidders are lost because they have no desire to sign up for a website sight-unseen?
Its is under beta testing now……it will be open after bugs are removed
Seems like a nice concept here, although certain other variants do exist. I tried checking it out, but it keeps getting stuck. Hopefully the bugs will be ironed out soon. Way to Go, Best of luck!
We are ironing as fast as possible! But I am all hooves, so it is taking a bit
.
I’m going to try selling everything on the floor in my projects room.
Get your fingers ready for 10GB IDE drives. Yeah, you know you want it.
It our pleasure to assist you with your floor cleaning Jay! can we stuff that 10GB drive into my computers SD slot? That would be a huge win.
Note: auctions are still simulated….
If you’ve tried swoopo, check out http://www.spree4.com – a new twist on the idea and GUARANTEED savings on RRP
Great concept.. I think its the perfect storm in a world where everything is about the ‘here and now’ and real time satisfaction. Human nature will be the fuel here pushing this to the masses… looking forward to watching the Zebra grow!
Thanks! We are looking forward to changing the way the web does business to match the way the users demand it.
And we want the Zebra to grow too but we need a bigger cubicle for him.
Interesante!
no habla espanol……but I got that one thanks!