"Auction Site" Swoopo got $44800 for a $2500 computer. See comments for explanation

http://www.swoopo.com/auction.html?aid=166988

by jimmyrcom • 17 years ago

14 26 17 years ago

The Way swoopo works: Users pay 75 cents per bid to use swoopo. Penny auctions start with a product at $0 then each bid increases the item price by one cent. Bidding at the last second won't help because it resets the timer to 10, 15 or 20.

$44800 computer: 58950 bid were placed, at 75 cents each that's $44212.50 + the final price $589.50 for a total of $44802

I researched the site a bit and generated some statistics including the top 20 biggest consumer fails / swoopo wins, the above being the most profit they've made. http://blog.jimmyr.com/Auction_site_Swoopo_a_scam_or_a_bargain__13_2009.php

jimmyrcom2• 17 years ago

$44800 computer: 58950 bid were placed, at 75 cents each that's $44212.50 + the final price $589.50 for a total of $44802

noodle2• 17 years ago

yeah, this is not the first time swoopo has come up here.

patio112• 17 years ago

I liked the discussion on "Profitable Until Deemed Illegal":

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=395970

jraines3• 17 years ago

What do you think is critical mass for making something like this profitable?

And how do you scale something like this that seems to require 1 db call per user per second minimum? Is this something memcached would be good for? (I don't really know much about it yet)

I'm interested b/c I made a little clone that I'd like to turn into . . . something, maybe a facebook app: www.dealbattles.com. It's a Ruby/sinatra app right now that uses JQuery .post and .load to display the counters and update based on bids. You can't really use it right now because buying credits is tied to my paypal sandbox acct.

If anyone's interested in helping, I'm listening.

SwellJoe3• 17 years ago

Do you not have any ethical qualms about taking advantage of the mentally retarded like this?

I can't holler at the Swoopo folks about it, since I don't know them. But, you're right here, so I feel compelled to be judgmental. I don't do that very often. Generally speaking, I think just about anything goes (porn, gambling, soft drugs like pot, etc., as long as you're only selling to adults). But taking advantage of the least intelligent and the most desperate to save money is just nasty.

omarchowdhury• 17 years ago

Well there is obviously a market for it.

jraines3• 17 years ago

I'll be the first to admit that it's one step above gambling (you do actually have control over if you 'win' or not, if you're willing to spend until you do - this is why it's legal and not a raffle).

But you just said you're OK with gambling, so I don't get the outrage. Swoopo pushes it as "entertainment shopping", which I think is fair.

And if you want to really get cynical, separting the idiotic from their money is a public service insofar as they can't spend it on things with negative externalities, like US Weekly</joke>.

patio112• 17 years ago

You don't have to be "retarded" to fall for something like this. The poster clearly is quite intelligent. He also thinks he knows how to beat the system. Behold the system in all its perfidious majesty: if there are two people in the world smart enough to beat it, it will take everyone for all they are worth.

The smartest man I have ever known, who will one day cure cancer, once described to me in all earnestness how the double-your-bet-after-you-lose strategy was flawless. (Relatedly: He also was a fan of penny stocks.)

zaidf• 17 years ago

Why do you think this is very different from gambling?

bigiain2• 17 years ago

Cynical me says "It's only a scam - who'd bother to engineer it properly to scale and still produce 'accurate' data? Just 'guess' (ie: rand();) vaguely believable numbers and display them."

big

lowdown• 17 years ago

5-10 in a federal penitentiary?

noodle2• 17 years ago

the concept is profitable almost immediately.

carlosrr• 17 years ago

Something that needs to update so frequently shouldn't poll for its data. It would be a better idea to create a Comet server. That simplifies synchronization since you don't have to query the DB every time someone does a request. Instead, you query it every time someone changes a field.

midnightmonster2• 17 years ago

I built a site like this for a client a couple years ago. They were hoping to use it to raise money for charity. They paid me for the work but never operated the site.

lurker767• 17 years ago

i'll pay you for the site again.

midnightmonster2• 17 years ago

If you're serious, I can contact the original client and see about IP. My email is this screen name @gmail.com.

sil3ntmac• 17 years ago

Looks like the system is guaranteed to make money on at least some items... for example:

http://www.swoopo.com/auction.html?cm_re=Homepage-_-Grid-_-1...

See the "15" image next to the countdown? Mouseover that, and it tells you that the 10 second countdown for this item will not trigger until the bid has gotten up to $64.70. Doesn't take a genius to figure out that the house will win this one (if not all of them).

gojomo• 17 years ago

I find this morally dubious for the same reasons as SwellJoe -- it's an awful gamble, even by the standards of slot machines or government lotteries.

I hope competition and education can drive their take down to the level of other money-based game operators. For example, what if there were an alternative where the max collected on any item was capped at 2X retail?

"Auction Site" Swoopo got $44800 for a $2500 computer. See comments for explanation

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