Trade Me + Facebook = TradeBook
Sometime early May this year Trade Me opened up a little and made available XML feeds for auction listings by user. Not long after that Facebook launched their developer platform, and since then I've been thinking about putting the two together.
I finally got around to getting it done with help from Allen who designed a simple application page, and the result is the imaginatively titled TradeBook. If you are a Facebook user you can jump right in and install the TradeBook app on your profile. The application will automatically update your Facebook profile whenever you list something for sale on Trade Me.
Now, I have no clue how many people will use this (lots I hope), but I figure the overlap between Trade Me users and Facebook users has to be about as big a segment as it gets for this kind of thing. Every man, woman, child and their dog in New Zealand uses Trade Me. While Facebook is the social network du jour, and has certainly got more traction than MySpace ever did amongst the people I know anyway...
So we'll see. There's a few more things that could be done, but right now TradeBook has all the obvious features:
- Displays your Trade Me auctions on your Facebook profile (with title, thumbnail, current price and end date)
- Choose how many listings to display
- Automagically updates your profile whenever it detects a new listing
- Pings the Facebook newsfeed API whenever it detects a new listing
If you are so inclined, I'd love to hear any feedback you might have.
I meant to comment on this when you first posted it, but I completely forgot. I have thought about it a bit though, and I think it’s a great idea in essence. The only issue I can think of is that the majority of Facebook users aren’t based in NZ – since TradeMe is an NZ company and very few shippers that I’ve come across are willing to ship overseas, it could create issues with overseas friends wanting to bid on items on your page if you’re not willing to send them out of NZ. Still, that’s something that’s irrelevant if TradeMe users are willing to ship overseas and add the app specifically to get their auctions viewed by wider audiences. That could be a good way to market the benefits.
If you were somehow able to sell the concept to Ebay, though, you’d make an absolute killing ;)
Hey Dude, yeah there are a bunch of eBay apps out there already which all have a built in revenue model because eBay has a killer affiliate programme. Not so Trade Me, nevermind, it’s just for kicks and giggles.
I’ve been thinking lately that Trademe should really do something with the million odd users they have in oldfriends.co.nz
Drag that thing from web 1.o to 2.o and it would be a sweet base for a nz social network site.
Hey Tim,
Too right, it is really strange that more hasn’t been made of Oldfriends…it really was the orginal social network in NZ and I guess now is just dying on the wine in the wake of Facebook and Bebo and the rest.