Tweebay: What if eBay was powered by Twitter?

Tweebay is an online auction service that uses Twitter to let people know about the items you're selling. Here's how it works. You follow Tweebay on Twitter and you'll receive a direct message to verify your account. Then you can bid on auctions posted on the site or post new listings.

Auction terms should look familiar to anyone who has ever used eBay. You can upload a phoot, set a buy now price, or a reserve price. You can also set a postage price and choose your currency, although right now all listings are in British pounds. In Twitter-like style, you have to keep your descriptions under 240 characters.

There's no feedback, which is one of the things that makes buying and selling from strangers on eBay possible. But since the people most likely to see your Tweebay listings are your Twitter friends, they may trust you enough to buy from you without seeing a feedback rating.

If the site takes off, that feedback issue could become a problem, since there's nothing stopping you from visiting Tweebay.com and looking for auctions from people you don't know (although the lack of a search engine makes the web page only moderately useful). And the site likely faces another problem: trademark infringement. I wouldn't be surprised to see Tweebay change its name to something that sounds a bit less like eBay at some point.

[via TechCrunch]

Tags: auction, ebay, tweebay, twitter