Swaptree, the online media barter system founded in 2004, is finally getting ready to emerge from private beta. The site will launch on July 4, next week.
The long awaited barter site has set itself apart from the other barter communities with its complex and effective algorithms that matches your items with others to determine value from an objective reference point. In this manner, Swaptree can narrow down items that are good matches for things you have, and can filter these results based on your location, or your networks, such as friends and co-workers. Swaptree is generally free to use; you pay for postage using the Media Mail service, which costs about $2.50. You'll also be charged another $1 a month to cover credit card transactions.
To keep things uniform and fairly simple on your part, you'll need to enter the UPC or ISBN code for your item. This all adds to the usefulness of Swaptree's system of multiple algorithms, reducing the amount of time you spend searching, matching and actually bartering for other items. The amount of personal data that goes into Swaptree is a marketer's dream, so once Swaptree launches next week, hopefully it will be able to take full advantage of the kind of database they've been building for over three years.
Similar services include SwitchPlanet, SaySwap, and iLetYou.