Introducing: Cheapforia

August 19, 2007 | By Jared Howard | 821 Views

So, after much work, I am finally happy to introduce what I hope will turn into your first destination for great deals, great conversation and great fun, Cheapforia.com. What is Cheapforia? cheap◦for◦ia: is a feeling of great happiness or luck when scoring an amazing deal, commonly exaggerated, and thoroughly addictive. The goal of Cheapforia.com is to share your cheapforia with others and in the process make shopping social again. At its core Cheapforia is a message board, very similar to other popular “deal boards” such as slickdeals and fatwallet. It is soo much more though. Some exciting features of Cheapforia that make it unique are…

dealSy: dealSy is a new way to show great deals (especially brick and mortar) using geo location. If you find a great deal in a store in your hometown, simply place a pin on the map and add the relevant details. Now you can very quickly, visually, see all the awesome deals around your area.

talk: “talk” is a real-time instant messaging application built into Cheapforia. Now you can talk deals with other shoppers in real time or talk about whatever you want. The “talk” window is also independent of the main Cheapforia site so you can continue to surf the site as you chat. “talk” supports buddy lists as well, just like AIM or Yahoo Messenger, so you can create different buddy lists for different groups of people. “talk” also supports chat rooms so you’re not limited to one person per conversation, all your friends can join!

Enhanced Profile: Cheapforia allows a greater degree of customization of your personal profile than other typical message boards and forums. Not only can you add your picture and avatar but you can display your flickr gallery. You can also display your wishpot.com wishlist and allow other shoppers and friends to see what you’ve been saving for. You can display your most recent del.iciou.us bookmarks and give people an insight into your personal taste and preferences. Your profile also features your own personal “white board.” Your “white board” allows other shoppers and friends who visit your profile to leave you messages.

Main Site: Cheapforia allows you to “whisper” comments to select people so only they see the comment. Cheapforia also allows you to “thank” people that post great deals. Your thank yous show up in the applicable thread so the thread creator can see all the people that thanked them. Your profile also displays your total number of thank yous (people that have thanked YOU).

Like I said before, the aim of Cheapforia is to make shopping social again, by providing a place where you can meet other shoppers, talk, share a piece of your personality and hopefully build relationships. Cheapforia is very much beta at this point and by no means close to being where I want and envision it to be eventually. There are bugs, there are quirks and there are probably things that flat out don’t work but if this is a concept that interests you I truly hope you spend some time on the site, help me make it better and turn it into what YOU guys want. I have setup a blog on the site itself where you can leave bug reports, where I’ll report and point out new features and where you can leave feedback, either good or bad. Share your cheapforia! Let’s all help make shopping social again!

Posted in Annoucements