Got the Wrong Gift from Santa? How Much Should You Sell It For?

December 30, 2011 1 Comment

Have you ever wondered if you were getting ripped off on eBay?  Have you tried to sell something on Craigslist, but weren’t sure how to price it?

Pricenomics, a new Y Combinator Startup, can help.  Pricenomics crawls the web to compile a holistic price guide for a broad range of products, from bicycles to iPads.

Here’s how it works. Santa gave you an iPad 2 3G for Christmas. But you already have one, so you turn to Craigslist. How much should you ask for?

Visit the site and search for “iPad 2 3G.” Priceonomics gives you an estimate for how much you should sell it for, along with a range of prices it’s found on the internet. It then displays listings of other people selling that product.

Check it out:

Obviously, it works the other way as well; maybe you asked for a MacBook Air, but Santa didn’t deliver.  Pricenomics has browse-able guides for a range of products. If you’re looking to buy a Macbook Air, Pricenomics provides you with a comprehensive report of price estimates and sale listings.

There’s nothing fancy going on here – the website’s just quickly providing you with a lot of data, most of which you could have found on your own.

TechCrunch asked Pricenomics CEO Michael Flaxman why Pricenomics is different from other price guides.  He said,

“First, in almost all our verticals we’re the first price guide to exist. Want to know what a five-year old bicycle is worth? Good luck finding that! Second, our guides are generated by the collective knowledge of literally millions of people.  All the data is transparently available for everyone to see.  This gives us a credibility that doesn’t exist for the big car pricing sites.  This means that all of our guides are constantly updated automatically as we continue to index the web, so there’s no risk of our prices becoming stale.”

Pricenomics launched on December 21st. They may have missed the holiday blitz, but re-gift and resell season will soon be upon us.

 

Filed under news, Opinion, review Tagged with , , ,

Why You Should Name Your Child “Peter”

April 27, 2011 1 Comment

One of my favorite parts about the tech revolution is the sheer amount of data that we, as end users, generate.  I’m thrilled when companies or organizations use data, voluntarily offered by their users, to write impromptu market research reports.  It’s even more exciting when market research isn’t their core competency.

One of the best examples of this is OKCupid‘s OKTrends, which reports on “Dating research from OKCupid.”

Insights, LinkedIn‘s equivalent market research arm, published a report on their blog that analyzes names.  The report analyzes names of professionals using LinkedIn. Specifically, the report looks at what names are overrepresented in different professional areas, such as among sales reps, CEOs, engineers, or athletes.

The top CEO names, for men:

  1. Peter
  2. Bob
  3. Jack
  4. Bruce
  5. Fred

And for women:

  1. Deborah
  2. Sally
  3. Debra
  4. Cynthia
  5. Carolyn

LinkedIn identifies two trends. Among males, CEO names tend to be either short or shortened versions of popular first names.  This could be because nicknames are often used to denote friendliness or openness.  Conversely, female CEOs use their full name to project a more professional image.

Here’s the infographic.

Read LinkedIn’s full report.

Filed under review Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

You Knew It All Along

December 28, 2010 2 Comments

Hindsight Bias, as we learned a few days ago, is “the inclination to see events that have occurred as being more predictable than they were before they took place.”  If this sounds familiar, it’s because it is.  In common parlance, we call it “20/20 Hindsight.”

For those of us who are of the nerdier persuasion, we may have seen the recent xkcd comic called “Business Idea.”

Our main stick-figure protagonist is found suffering from a severe case of Hindsight Bias.  In this comic, he’s found a company that’s capitalizing on a business idea he had “like five years ago.” He’s now getting compensated for his brilliance. (Click for larger image)

 

Hindsight Bias: if only we got paid for it in real life.

Filed under Opinion Tagged with , , ,

“Most Likely to Succeed” at #Failcon

October 25, 2010 1 Comment

While visiting the Demo Room, we had the opportunity to look at a variety of different StartUps.  Later, using our phones, we voted via text message on the ones we thought were “Most Likely To Succeed.” Here are the winners.
  1. Mogotix – Paperless event tickets.
  2. MyNextCustomer - Measures calls and leads from a variety of sources, like Paid Search, SEO, Social, Offline campaigns.
  3. CardMunch – Take a picture of a business card with your phone; it turns into a virtual contact.

 

Filed under Opinion Tagged with , ,

Community Management: Failing to Connect

October 25, 2010 1 Comment

The final panel was on “Community Management: Failing to Connect.” David Spark from Spark Media Solutions moderated.

I didn’t really understand what Community Management was before this panel.  Apparently, this area focuses on communication between the company and the users/buyers, especially when those users/buyers are angry. A few take-away messages:

  • Humor is very difficult – be careful!
  • Have a blog presence and a social presence.  Get your whole team involved.
  • Fall in love with everyone.
  • Be honest with your users.

One of the panelists summed up community management succinctly:  ”"The internet is angry, so we just talk to it.”

Filed under conference, failcon Tagged with , , ,

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