Monday, March 09, 2009

Swoopo: not an auction site

A $79.16 MacBook? ZDNet today has an interesting article about a new online "auction" service---swoopo. After reading the article and watching the site, I have a conclusion, however, that swoopo is indeed not an auction site. The site sells lottery!

The founders are the true "evil genius" as Sam Diaz said in his post. They have created a site selling lotteries in the form of "auction"! What they do is that they split everything into mini-slices, 75 cents per slice, number INDEFINITELY. Then they sell the slices in contrast to sell the product! Therefore, like any other lottery games, it actually does not matter how much the real product is worth. The only thing matters is how many people want to try their luck. Ideally, the more precious the product is, the more people may want to try the luck. There goes the scheme.

The $79.16 MacBook is really a small potato, though the site actually profited $4,638 from this $79.16 SALE! Don't be amazed, however, this is just exactly how lottery gains money.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

So its a lottery scam instead of an auction scam.

It may be genius, but it is also evil.

Anonymous said...

Oh please, there's nothing evil about it. As P.T. Barnum said "There's a sucker born every minute." or every second in this case.