Taking a lead from Princeton's own Meg Whitman '77, who runs the popular online auction website eBay, Clay Bavor '05 has unveiled "pBay" — an auction website for students to buy and sell items.
The free service was launched Monday on Point, the USG's new student portal, which Bavor also created.
"The goal of pBay is to make it as easy as possible for people in the Princeton community to buy, sell and exchange stuff cheaply," he said. "I am most excited to save money on textbooks."
On Tuesday, after about 25 hours of operation, 40 listings had been posted on the site.
Current USG president, Leslie-Bernard Joseph '06 sees pBay as an exciting addition to the Princeton Internet community.
"I think it's a fun, easy way for students to exchange anything we may have lying around our rooms and make a profit on it," Joseph said. "It integrates the old Salesline with an auction option and pays homage to Princeton alum Meg Whitman."
The USG hopes pBay will replace the USG's older Bookline and Salesline websites and lure visitors to the Point website.
"When I was building Point . . . I was eager to replace [Bookline and Salesline] with this," Bavor said.
Among improvements from the older sites, Bavor noted the easier setup of pBay, its capacity to list items automatically and its auction format.
Bavor first thought of the idea when he and a classmate were assigned a project he named pBay in a computer science class on electronic auctions.
Christopher Roberson '08, who was one of the first students to list an item for auction, sees many advantages to pBay compared to other online auction sites.
"You don't have to pay shipping with pBay, and now people may actually want some of the stuff that you list and visa versa," Roberson said.
While the name "pBay" is not affiliated with eBay, Bavor does not think there will be any problems with the name or similar logo.
"We are not making a profit on the site, and you need a Princeton ID and password to get on," he said. "We may or may not have trouble with eBay."
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