Poor man’s auction software – Craigslist and Google Docs

We mentioned how easy it was to create web forms with Google Docs back in November. Now, technology blog TechCrunch is running a story about a very interesting do-it-yourself project combining the ease of Google Doc form creation with the enormous prospective bidder pool of Craigslist to form a rudamentary Internet bidding system.

Craigslist doesn’t natively support auctions. It does, however, have a ton of regular visitors, most of whom are looking to buy something. Those of us auctioneers who realize this fact about Craigslist frequently advertise our auctions there. The subject of the Techcrunch story had a Macintosh G5 to sell. He created a Google Docs form that posted name, email address and price to a read-only spreadsheet that hid the email addresses from everyone but him. He said that the highest bid received by noon Pacific time would be the winner and linked to the form and the spreadsheet from his Craigslist ad listing the auction.

What do you think of consumers directly leveraging the Craigslist buyer base using the auction method of marketing? To read the whole story, complete with screen shots of the bidding form and the spreadsheet, visit techcrunch.com.