Swop365.com is a budding platform for connecting users who intend to swap items, talent, skills and time with other users within their community.
Users can post items they want to trade in appropriate categories. Categories range from books to electronics to furniture and skills. When other users see an item they like, they can send a bid for it.
Once a bid is placed, a transaction is created with a set expiry period, after which the user has to pick a favourable swap offer. Both the receiver and sender can communicate via the messaging feature on the site. Once they come to some an agreement, they can then arrange to either meetup at their own convenience, to finalise the barter, or let Swop365 handle the pick up and drop off, with the assurance of consumer protection and for a token fee. Pick up and drop off rates are as low as N80 for comics and magazine, and as high as N5000 for huge items like a grand piano. This is Swop365’s primary revenue stream
Swop365 wants to be Africa’s Craiglist, but with a social networking twist – users can follow each other to stay in the loop of their listings, send direct messages and a range of other social networking features. The service launched in June but it appears not to gained any traction. There are barely any listings in any categories, and even where there are listings, they appear to be dummies.
Swop365 was created by Solanke Oluwatomi (Co-founder) and his team; Fagbohungbe Ayomide (Lead Developer) and Awodumila Olubukola (Marketing an Logistics). They believe their trade by barter model is enough to differntiate them from similar services like OLX and Tradestable.
Photo Credit: Orin Zebest via Compfight cc
