Social commerce and mobile commerce meet in a new iPhone app
Swap.com has debuted an app that enables users to scan bar codes to search products.
Swap.com is bringing social commerce into the mobile commerce world with a new iPhone app. The app includes bar code scanning functionality and social network integration.
Swap.com enables consumers to create free accounts and then post products they have or want to swap with other consumers. When a Swap.com user finds an item she wants, she can click on a link that connects her with the owner of the item. She then can propose swapping something she has for the item. When two users agree to a swap, they make the transaction through a Swap.com address exchange. Users must pay a transaction fee to Swap.com and pay for shipping and handling on their own.
The iPhone app, built by mobile app developers Raizlabs and Mirasense, enables users to quickly search Swap.com’s entire product listings, which total more than 13 million, the company says. A user in a store taps a bar on the home screen that activates the scanning feature. She holds her smartphone camera above a bar code on a product on a store shelf and the app recognizes the code, searches through Swap.com products, and pulls up the product, if available.
Conversely, a user can scan products she has at home and wishes to swap, and the app automatically pulls up the product for her to post through her account on Swap.com.
“Swapping is an age-old activity, and we’re really leading the swap movement into the future with this mobile technology,” says Jeff Bennett, CEO of Swap.com. “We’ve leveraged our online marketplace with over a million swappers and smart technology like Mirasense’s bar code scanner, Scandit, to enable frictionless entry of all your stuff, to create a forward-thinking app that’s easy to use.”
The app, available for free at Apple Inc.’s App Store, also features Facebook integration, allowing users to connect their Swap.com accounts with their Facebook accounts to post information on Facebook about products they have or want. |
