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In the News "New Breed of Auctioneer Moving Into Mainstream" By Scot Petersen Online auctions: they're not just for body parts anymore. Oh, sure, you're still going to see sites like the one that harvests eggs from supermodels and auctions the eggs off to the highest bidder. But for every RonsAngels.com out there, you will find much more "traditional" auctions going on, like the cow auction going on at metromix.com. Not real cows—cow art, with proceeds going to charity. And for every guy who tries to auction off what he found under his couch cushions—successfully, I might add, for $3.07 on eBay—you will find Fortune 500 companies bidding on heavy goods and industrial equipment at sites such as DoveBid.com, iMark.com and TradeOut.com (see our Nov. 1 Page 1 story). In short, auctions are everywhere. And their progeny—set-your-own-price sites such as Priceline.com (from plane tickets to groceries), negotiated price sites such as Hagglezone.com, and group buying sites such as Accompany.com and Mercata.com—are catching on. What a bunch of Pez traders started at eBay is fast becoming the preferred medium of exchange in the Internet economy. But this is only the tip of the iceberg. There are forces at work here that are taking the auction process and doing to it what our friend Stuart from the Ameri Trade commercial did to the cushy world of stock trading: turning it upside down and shaking out all the nickels and dimes. And I mean literally. For example, Surfbuzz.com, which launches this week, starts out looking like your run-of-the-mill rewards site, akin to Mypoints.com. You collect "BuzzPoints" simply by surfing through the portallike content of news, stock quotes, e-mail, discussion groups, a search engine and so on. You earn more points if you click through ads, and more still if you buy on the basis of those ads, and more for signing up and referring someone else to sign up. In most reward programs, you redeem points for merchandise or discounts. But at Surfbuzz those points turn into currency that can be used to bid on real, live goods like, say, a car. All bids start at one Buzz Point and go only as high as demand for the item. So, by simply surfing the site, you could win a Porsche Boxster for free. No cash, no credit cards, no fraud. (They've figured out a way to block auto matic spiders bent on collecting points.) What's the catch? There's none—if the idea works. And that's a big "if.'' Users won't surf the site if the auxiliary content isn't compelling enough to get users to switch from their current Web hangouts. And the site will need to encourage enough merchants to offer up their goods (in exchange for advertising or promotions) so there's something worth bidding on. I like the possibilities for two reasons. First, the operation was founded by the brothers Meshkin: Brian, age 23, and Alex, 19. Alex, a professed millionaire, has supplied the seed money from profits he gained by taking his college tuition money and trading stock online. They've recruited brand and marketing managers from Coca-Cola to help run the business. The second is youth. Not the youth of the founders, but of their target market, ages 18 to 30. Spending 8 to 12 hours a day online (outside of work) isn't even considered strange anymore. It's that saturated user they are going after, who doesn't think twice about living life online, but who now has a way to be rewarded for it. The only question is, When do they find time to drive the Porsche? |