What is Commuto?
I’ve had a lot of conversations lately with people who are skeptical that there is any room in the online bartering sector for Commuto, seeing as Craigslist and Kijiji are such dominant forces. What these people fail to realize is that we are not going up against Craiglist, Kijiji, or any other bartering site. We are creating our own unique hybrid service that combines bartering with socializing.
Now why would we do that? Why would people care to socialize with others in a bartering site? Well, the answer is in the widgets my friends.
Commuto’s M.O. is to help users barter in a social micro community environments. We don’t want to provide a service which is already covered by many other sites, which is marco bartering in large communities such as cities. This would be foolish as it’s already done well enough to be left alone. While all users who join Commuto do become members of their city or town, this is only a means to an end. What we expect users to do is create smaller, more focused communities with the users in their cities and schools. And in order to do this we have the “Barter Buddy” widget.
The “Barter Buddy” is a widget which sits on the left side of your screen. The BB recommends to users other members of their communities who are most similar to them. Using an algorithm we wrote, we compare users based on what they own, what they want, what they look at and how they review items on the site. We feel that combining these fields, which are each scaled differently, gives us a pretty accurate picture as to whom users are most similar to as far as their likes.
From there users are able to create or join communities and invite others who have similar interests. So users in Los Angeles can create a community for Xbox 360 gamers, where everyone trades only Xbox 360 games and accessories. Or users in Boston University can create a clothing community where they can trade clothes with other people in their school. Or green thumbs anywhere can now trade vegetables, fruits and plants with each other very easily. The idea is to eliminate all the clutter and have users become members of communities which are specific to them.
The other benefit of being members of these smaller specific communities is the people that you meet. While combining bartering and socializing might seem silly, we believe it’s a great outlet for meeting other aficionados, which under normal circumstances aren’t easy to meet. We also have the Facebook application which helps the whole social aspect of Commuto and another widget which allows you to pull any community from Commuto and place it on other sites such as MySpace, or Ning.
So that’s the idea behind Commuto. It’s not meant to compete with Craigslist, Kijiji or any other bartering site. It’s meant to be its own category. A true definition of social commerce.
Thanks and trade friendly,
Stephen