Something that has created a ton of buzz in traditional media recently is Mpire, a new online shopping startup based in Seattle, Washington by former Expedia and AtomFilms brains Matt Hulett. Mpire aims to make lives easier for hundreds of thousands of people who shop online by providing price comparisons, shopping guides, coupons, plugins, trend meters, and a search engine. Quickly judging by its interface, a Technorati for shopping would be the best way to put it.
The idea behind Mpire is to provide you with everything when you’re looking to buy something online, or simply want suggestions as to what’s selling for low and what everyone is rushing for at the moment. What’s more, if you find yourself to be a frequent buyer, you can install the plugin and have much easier access to the data.
Additionally, they’ve built a shopping search engine which searches more than 500 locations. While it’s a bit slow to load, the results are worth waiting for. I think if Google comes out with a Froogle 2.0, this is how it would be. The results are displayed in a much precise manner and I love the Flash-based trend graph which shows the price at different points in time. You can also narrow it down by location or search for auctions only.
Mpire really seems like a nice and useful tool for the frequent and even occasional shopper. They’ve tried to bring things together in this very separated space, and they’ve succeeded to an extent. What I find interesting is that while Google is trying to move away from this space — with the demoting of Froogle — other new and exciting products are entering the marketing and really doing a good job of it.
[tags]Mpire, Online Shopping[/tags]
