On The Media: Swoopo in The New York Times Today

Flipped open my New York Times today and what did I see? Well it was an article on a topic I know and love: penny auctions. The Times offers what for the in-the-know penny auction enthusiast would be a fairly blase overview of how Swoopo works, with a few interesting facts laced in.

We learn from the Times article that Swoopo has 2.5 million users, a number that would be more significant had Bidcactus not declined to state the number of users they have in our interview last week.

We also learn that former... hedge fund quant Glen Whitney, who the Times asked to review Swoopo, believes the site is a "chump's game."

And most interestingly, we hear from a lawyer who says It Isn't Gambling, which was also the title of an earlier Penny Auction Insider post on the topic. The lawyer backs-up the claim Malvolio and I have been making from the beginning which is, in lawyer Anthony Cabot's own words, "Lotteries are games of chance, and an auction does not have what you would call any systematic chance, a random event that determines the winner." We rest our case.

On a side note: compare this Times article to the ABC 6 story on GoBid I reviewed last week and you see why the Times is "All the news that's fit to print," and ABC 6 is something less than that. Sorry ABC, but you didn't even tell your readers the name, title or significance of your only source, a guy who's opinions formed the bulk of your story.