Auto classifieds + video = a good idea
From Arrington, a review of Hotswap. Following my trashing of Rentmineonline, thought I'd comment on a classifieds business with a good business model.
Hotswap is focused on one high-value vertical: autos. Sure, there is plenty of competition (eBay motors being to 800 pound gorilla). However, Hotswap are offering an innovative feature - namely, short videos of the cars being sold. Hotswap have also signed a deal with Red McCombs to feature all of the used cars in his (large) inventory, meaning that the notorious chicken / egg problem with classifieds sites is some ways to being solved.
The next step for Hotswap is to create a simple tool for used car dealers that (1) adds value to the dealership, and (2) makes posting videos of used cars in the dealers' inventories on Hotswap easy. If I were conculting for Hotswap, I would suggest creating a "custom minisite" feature, which would allow used car dealers to create a branded minisite linking to their own sites and making use of Hotswap's video functionality. Uploading to the minisite would automatically upload to the main site. This would improve the dealers' own sites while adding inventory to the main Hotswa site.
(Another possibility is to offer an ASP inventory management service to auto dealers - this would be more work but would offer more lock-in. These systems exist already but an ASP version for smaller, less well-organized dealers might gain traction.)
Anyway - great idea and hopefully they will run hard at it.
Hotswap is focused on one high-value vertical: autos. Sure, there is plenty of competition (eBay motors being to 800 pound gorilla). However, Hotswap are offering an innovative feature - namely, short videos of the cars being sold. Hotswap have also signed a deal with Red McCombs to feature all of the used cars in his (large) inventory, meaning that the notorious chicken / egg problem with classifieds sites is some ways to being solved.
The next step for Hotswap is to create a simple tool for used car dealers that (1) adds value to the dealership, and (2) makes posting videos of used cars in the dealers' inventories on Hotswap easy. If I were conculting for Hotswap, I would suggest creating a "custom minisite" feature, which would allow used car dealers to create a branded minisite linking to their own sites and making use of Hotswap's video functionality. Uploading to the minisite would automatically upload to the main site. This would improve the dealers' own sites while adding inventory to the main Hotswa site.
(Another possibility is to offer an ASP inventory management service to auto dealers - this would be more work but would offer more lock-in. These systems exist already but an ASP version for smaller, less well-organized dealers might gain traction.)
Anyway - great idea and hopefully they will run hard at it.
Labels: autos, classifieds, hotswap
posted by Moses Kagan at
1:37 AM
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