David Flynn03 May 2009, 2:41 PM
Dell’s new Swarm taps into social networks like Twitter and FaceBook to promote group buys of desktops, notebooks and netbooks.
Dell is hoping to nudge group buys out of tech forums and into the mainstream with this week’s launch of its new Swarm service, which allows several buyers to drive down the price of selected Dell PCs.
Each discount deal offered on Swarm lasts for 72 hours or when there are 15 buyers – the sale closes when either of those criteria is met. The more people who sign up, the cheaper the product gets until it reaches a pre-set lowest price.
Once you join the Swarm you’re obliged to pay whatever the final price ends up being, so it’s in the buyer’s best interest to round up as many additional friends as possible.
If you’re not ready to buy at the current price but want to see how things go, you can follow a Swarm and get updates on its current price via email and/or SMS. Once it reaches the price you want you can then join the Swarm to buy it – but if you delay too long and 15 people sign up for the deal, you’ll miss out entirely.
The more buyers the greater the savings – but Swarm deals are limited to 72 hours or 15 buyers, whichever comes first...
Swarm will make its world debut tomorrow in Singapore at
http://dellswarm.com/sg, and is expected to be introduced into several other countries later in the year.
A demonstration of the Swarm service held last week showed how the price of an Inspiron Mini 12 netbook kicked off at SG$859, which was already down from its standard retail peg of SG$899, and then dropped as more buyers joined in until it hit the lowest price of SG$809.
A slider control on the very Web 2.0 page displays the discounted price based on the current number of buyers and also shows how many additional buyers are needed to reach the lowest price.
The Dell Swarm page lets you promote the deal and put out a call for additional buyers through your Twitter and Facebook accounts and even flag the deal using Digg and del.icio.us. (Twitter users can also follow Storm to get alerts on upcoming deals through @dellswarmsg).
Each person can buy up to three units but there’s no scope for customisation – Dell puts a single configuration on the block, and that’s what you get.