Swoopo

Jeff Atwood on Swoopo:

I just watched an 8GB Apple iPod Touch sell on swoopo for $187.65. The final price means a total of 1,251 bids were placed for this item, costing bidders a grand total of $938.25

How is that possible? Well, each time you bid you pay a $0.75 fee, which raises the the auction price by $0.15 and extends the close time by up to 20 seconds.

So I’m looking at a Nokia phone right now (picked at random off the Swoopo home page) where the bidding is up to $880, which means so far bidders have collectively paid well over $4,000 in fees to Swoopo.

Evil. Genius. I’m agape, and vaguely nauseated.