Content area
Full Text
BarterFarm.om, a Salt Lake-based dot-com that aims to be the eBay of barter, has concluded beta testing of its technology and is preparing to go live June 1.
Billing itself as the "first globally interconnected network of local barter/auction communities," BarterFarm.com will license its back-end technology to what it calls "barter farmers," whose job it is to market to their communities, be they geographic or affinity-based, explained Jon Firmage, cofounder and chairman of BarterFarm.com.
As an example, Firmage's mother, Gloria, has launched a website to target people in her residential area, Holladay. Members pay a fee to list items, but not to make transactions, which keeps the IRS off Gloria and BarterFarm.com's backs. The beauty of BarterFarm.com's technology, Firmage said, is that members create a profile of the products and services they have and those they want, and whether they're open to barter, auction, sell or buy them. Every 24 to 48 hours, the system's technology matches members' haves and wants and sends e-mail notifications to the respective parties, who then are free to initiate contact as they see fit.
BarterFarm.com first seeks matches among a member's community of origin. But the technology also searches every other BarterFarm.com community, noting, as it goes, in which communities those haves/wants originated.