New Best Facebook Applications
If there is one thing common among college students, it is that we all never have enough money. The stipend we get from our parents or the money from student loans is never enough. The tech outfit Who wish has just launched a Facebook application called College Swap that is trying to make it easier for cash strapped students to get the stuff they need. And by stuff I mean pretty much everything under the sun when it comes to products and services. You are only limited by what’s being offered by your fellow students. The more students you have using College Swap, the more likely you are going to find what you want and someone to swap with.
The function and flow of this new Facebook application is well done and intuitive. The home page has a nice streamlined look and shows the “live feed” of swap posts made by other users at your school. You can filter these posts by the following five categories: Books (i.e. textbooks), Toys (i.e. electronics and fun stuff), Crib (i.e. house/dorm related stuff), Services (i.e. anything legal), and Everything Else. You can also limit your searches by these categories.
Posting what you want and stuff you have to swap is easy to do via the “Add Stuff I Want” and “Add Stuff I Can Trade” buttons. When you make one of these posts it then appears under what is called your “Swap List”. CollegeSwap suggests that you start by posting a bunch of things that you have or are willing to trade. That way people can start making you swap offers. You might just end up getting something you weren’t expecting but would really like to have. In that way, using CollegeSwap can be quite fun beyond simply swapping for something you listed that you want.
Realizing that people might not always have items to swap, the Facebook application also provides a “Buy” button. By clicking that, you can make the other person a cash offer on their product or service. This means that CollegeSwap can actually be used to help students make money—not just by selling products but by selling services too. For example, let’s say you are a whiz at math or a foreign language. You could post tutoring services by clicking the “Add Stuff I Have to Trade” button. Other students could then make you cash offers for your tutoring services, or perhaps offer you something cool in return.
College Swap makes it easy to keep track of all your swap requests and the people who make swap requests with you via an “Inbox” that is a part of its Facebook application. When a swap has been accepted users must currently make arrangements to meet using Facebook’s private message system. However, Who wish is developing a new Facebook application called 2Meet4 which will help users quickly arrange meetings to fit their busy student schedule without the need to send a private message. They are also working to integrate a “Best Deals” function which will offer the best deals on items students need if they can’t swap for the items that they want.
