The recently launched PopDeal is a web service that coalesces social media and shopping. Users can submit items, in this case links to online deals (mostly gadgets and computer hardware), and vote them up or down all in a simple, Reddit style interface. Popular deals make it to the homepage, just as with digg.
PopDeal is still gaining momentum and will take a while for it to get to SlickDeals status if it catches on. Similar social shopping sites include CrowdStorm and Wize.
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I don’t know how well this will work, since whenever I shop for something I know exactly what I want. Browsing shopping sites doesn’t suit me very well. I guess I can’t speak for all the people that this is targeted to, though.
The funny thing is that a lot of the links are just links to pages on traditional deal sites. Not really adding anything new, other than a new way to share the information. Plus, they could work a little better on the implementation… the main page is not very inviting at all, there’s a typo in the about copy, and the design is bland (a rip of Reddit with a cheap Silk Icon on one link and very little beyond that).
First of all, thanks for the writeup Paul. I really appreciate the the time spent reviewing the site. However, one CRUCIAL aspect of the site was left out: revenue sharing. Every bargain that the user submits, his Adsense Publisher ID is shown 70% of the time on the submitted deal’s page. Plus, we encourage people to use affilate links to the deals.
Montoya- I agree, a lot of the people that are posting deals are posting from traditional deal sites. But theoretically with a larger user base, more of the new/undiscovered deals will float to the top.
As far as the main page and copy go, the site is in an open beta. (Good catch on the spelling mistake… I before E except after C ;) ) True, the design does look pretty simple, and similar to Reddit. We are big fans of the news site, and we really like the way they’ve done their layouts. As PopDeal grows, one of the first things to change is the design.
Thanks for the critiques! We’re listening and glad you’re sharing.
Ah yeah, I forgot about the Adsense thing!
I rarely come to these deal sites either, but when I have that itch for something new I’ll usually check these first. I found http://www.trezr.com to be one of the better looking user submitted deal sites, but this one has some good stuff as well.
Interesting. Another website worth looking at is http://www.viewscore.com . ViewScore is an aggregator site like Wize, but their technology analyzes each professional product review and provides a rank between 1-100. This way, your getting an objective product analysis without human or other bias. And the 1-100 range provides room to differentiate between two similarly rated products.
NOTE: I am a consultant who works with ViewScore.