Since our launch 2 months back, we have noticed that most of you like to share your gadget, fashion and food purchases. So we wanted to indulge you some more. Last night we started featuring some of our more prolific users on our home page. We have given them some fancy titles as well. 

The Fashion Divas are Nancy, Kateslet, Tia and Kylie. 

The Gadget Gurus are Cameron, Liu, Max and Binny

The Foodies are Omair, Richard, John and Huong

These users were picked based on how frequently they shared their purchases in these categories. They will last there only as long as someone else does not displace them. So go ahead and swipe some more and get yourself featured as a fashion diva, gadget guru or a foodie. 

A lot of you have told us that you would like to get feedback and talk about the things that you are planing to buy. Some of you just want to tell others aspirational stuff like "I want to buy a Ferrari", while some of you want to share things like "I want to buy an iPad. Is there anyway of getting past the 10 day wait?". For all these questions, we are thrilled to launch out new feature were you can share with others what you want to buy. Its a great way to tell people something about your tastes, your personality, or get some useful feedback that will help with your purchase. 

- Binny Mathews
http://www.didyouswipe.com/ 

360, Blo.gs, Babel Fish, Bix, Brickhouse, Briefcase, Buzz, Fire Eagle, FoxyTunes, Gallery, IndexTools are all names of products that Yahoo launched and discontinued or never took off. Mind you, thats only a very selective list that covers just the first 9 letters of the alphabet. - Lots of failed attempts at innovation

Now, there is nothing wrong with discontinuing a product or if a product never took off. Thats the price you pay for innovation - you quickly implement products / features, listen to feedback from early adopters and iterate - most of your products or features will not take off, but the few that do will make all the difference. The public debate and concern over Yahoo is because, after all these numerous attempts at innovation, nothing has taken off in a long time. Google, whose annual revenues were once less than Yahoo's quarterly revenues, now posts Yahoo's $6.5 billion annual revenue as its own quarterly revenue - everyone talks about how Google is going to grow a Yahoo every year and wants to hit $100 billion in annual revenue. - Failing during the innovation process is ok. 

All the public debate and concern about Yahoo is not because we dislike Yahoo, its because we have fond memories of Yahoo from its early days - it was the first web service that reached mass adoption at its scale - and would love for Yahoo to regain that leadership position. - Constructive criticism for Yahoo!

To be restored to its former glory, Yahoo needs a few killer products. Killer products come from a culture of innovation. Innovation happens, when you can rapidly release a basic prototype to early users. With over 600 million users using Yahoo's current services, I am not sure its easy to find who the 600 early adopters are. Even if Yahoo Product Managers identified those 600 early adopters, it is incredibly difficult for them not to leverage the company's biggest selling point - its 600 million users. Even if Yahoo were to test innovation with only 1% of its user base - thats still 6 million users. In order to release a product to 6 million users and expect most of them to be happy, Yahoo will have to anticipate what 6 million people need and build all that into the product in the hope of a "complete product", when what is actually needed is a "minimum viable product" that thrills 600 people. Not only does this lead to a product "designed by a committee", it also leads to delays, since any changes affecting 6 to 600 million users rightfully have to be scrutinized, approved by a hierarchy, load tested, QA tested etc, etc. - Y!'s biggest strength (600mn users) is its biggest challenge to innovate. 

In contrast, even though over a billion users come to Google everyday, Google doesn't own its billion users the way Yahoo does. Google does not have any media property on which it can promote its innovations. Google's prime service is a merit based search platform, where Darwins "survival of the fittest" prevails. So Google Product Managers don't have immediate access to 6 million users the way Yahoo does through its home page. So they have to do with innovation the way most startups do - release it to a small group, write a blog post, get Technology blogs to write about them and hope that the products brilliance will trigger word of mouth. Because of the absence of these 600 million users, Google's innovators don't have to go through long approvals, design processes, infrastructure requirements . Case in point - Paul Buchheit added the "by invitation only" feature to gmail, because he couldn't get enough hardware resources initially to scale gmail. - Innovate like startups do (with 600 users)

I don't know about you, but I always find out about Google's new services (maps, news, Buzz, blog reader etc) from friends or Google's blog or popular technology blogs. In contrast, I almost always find out about Yahoo's new services either on their home page or on one of the many other Yahoo pages. What does that tell you - thats word of mouth marketing versus running a superbowl ad (Google's 2010 superbowl ad is an exception). Think of all the websites you cant live without and think if you ever saw a mass market ad for those websites. Its like the hammer and the nail analogy - when you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Yahoo's hammer is its 600 million users. Yahoo's nails are the products it launches. You don't need a 600 million user hammer to launch a killer product. What Yahoo needs is a screwdriver with 600 early users. Yahoo doesn't need sharp nails as products, what Yahoo needs are screws - blunt around the edges - that will fit in after a little twisting and turning - but once fastened will hold on better than a nail.  

"You should definitely add a feature where Swipe automatically figures out what I am buying and swipes it...I don't care how, just do it",
"Your UI is too simple...puff it up a little bit",
"You guys are jokers.....why on earth would I want to tell others how much money I am spending",
"WOW...WOW....this is the next best thing since the invention of the wheel...my entire life I have been waiting for this"

All these are examples of the possible feedback we would like to hear from you. Tell us how you use Swipe, how you would like to use it, what you love, what you hate and what we can do to make you love us more.

Did you know that the "@" prefix and the "RT" on Twitter were a result of user feedback and the Twitter team had nothing to do with it. 

We would love to be humbled by your feedback. 

We promise to hear you, battle about it internally and get back to you with what we are doing about your feedback. 

- Binny Mathews
http://www.didyouswipe.com/ 

At Swipe, we believe that all of us are experts on something and look to others for expert advice on other things. We believe in empowering you, so that you can easily give and take advice from each other. 

Swipe is a fun and easy way to share and find shopping information in your area. Using Swipe you can share what you are buying and find useful information about what others are buying around you. Swipe helps you answer the questions “what did you buy”, “where did you buy it” and “how much did you pay for it”.

You can share the inside scoop on countless everyday purchases such as food, clothes, gadgets, furniture, books, tickets, gyms, cars, holiday packages, games etc, etc. Swipe starts social conversations around purchases and helps you discover prices, deals, opinions, locations, stores, products, shoppers and get feedback on your purchases - you shop street smart !! All this in a fun and competitive game environment where you are playing to increase your social status. 

Real time local shopping information helps you get an insight into others shopping habits and saves you time and money, by instantly discovering what others are buying around you. Currently real time local shopping information is not available and is walled in and contained between the shopper and a few close friends. Swipe provides a fun medium through which you can easily share and access valuable real time local shopping information. For example if you want to buy a shirt, you can use your Swipe phone app to find nearby stores that sell shirts, find what shirts other users are buying, how much did they pay for it and if there are any deals on shirts nearby.

Thanks a lot for checking out our blog. We will keep you updated on our progress. 

- Binny Mathews
http://www.didyouswipe.com/