From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

An online trading community exists to provide its members a structured method of trading, bartering, or selling goods or services. These communities often have forums and chatrooms designed to facilitate communication between the members. These communities are sometimes described as the electronic equivalent of bazaars, flea markets, garage sales, and so on.

Contents 1 General Rules of Conduct 2 History 3 Not Quite Trading Communities 4 References 5 Examples

Most online trading communities have specific rules adopted by the users of that community, and though they can differ most have settled upon a few standard practices:

• The less experienced trader (Usually indicated by their feedback or trade history) sends their half first.
• It is generally frowned upon by most communities to "thread crap" (A term referring to a user not involved in the pending trade undercutting a trade in progress with either a better deal or reasons for the trade not to take place).
• When trading any used items be sure to include the condition and quality of the product so as the receiver can determine the overall value of it.

The earliest trading site known to the internet (Not including sites such as eBay that accept cash transactions for all goods) appears to be Game Trading Zone. The domain name ugtz.com was registered in the summer of 1998, followed by the implementation of an independent database in the spring of 1999. This database also helped traders by showing them a list of potential trades, saving them a great deal of time in finding trades. In an effort to generate some income, 1999 also introduced advertisements, subscriptions, and an affiliate marketing program to the site. Another popular trading community, Switchouse, popularized the online activity. In the peak of Switchouse's popularity, Amazon.com bought the website hoping users of the community would use Amazon instead.

There are several lesser known sites known that specialize in a multitude of services including community trading, but not limited as such:

• Craig's List is a site for posting personal advertisements but many users have found this a less than conventional means of trading goods online with local residents.
• 1UP is a website dedicated to the publishing of news, videos, and other related media dealing with video games. There is a growing section of the site though dedicated the trading of games and DVD's on their message boards.
• IGN is another website dedicated to videogame news and media that also has message boards dedicated to online trading. The distinguishing factors being that IGN has a much larger integrated database of games and DVD's in existence that users can add to their collection lists for trade purposes as well as mark the ones they are playing to lock from trade.

• Game Trader World - 'The Ultimate Game Trading Community'
• Gamershare Video Game Trading Community
• Peerflix DVD trading
• BarterTown Wargames trading
• Game Trading Zone Cross-item trading for games, movies, music and books
• Trade Games Now
• HelpingHero Trading services in a closed community
• SwapSimple Cross-item trading for books, DVDs, videogames, and audiobooks - using an instant Trade Credit system.