Glyde: A Smoother Way To Buy And Sell Your Games

Update: I spoke with Glyde boss Simon Rothman today, who explained in detail how Glyde is more about subtlety and speed and less about user frustration and big profits for a large corporation.

After going through a step-by-step process of how we list items for sale at eBay (a process many of you are quite familiar with), we compared it with the same process at Glyde.  What can take 20-30 minutes on eBay will take mere seconds on Glyde, primarily because, as Rothman put it, they've "absorbed" most of the work into the platform.  In other words, they find the best seller (taking distance and rating into account), suggest the best market price (the system already knows it), set the shipping, and that's it.  There's every incentive to be an honest seller, and because Glyde doesn't have to support the massive overhead GameStop does, they don't need to take much off the top.  10%, in fact, while GameStop's markup is significantly higher.

Don't be misled by a seeming lack of content; it's simple because they do most all the work behind the scenes, leaving you to buy and sell with a few simple clicks.  And remember, WE at PSXE abide by a similar philosophy; we don't inundate your computer with giant pop-ups or shove screens and moving animations in your face on every page.  So y'all should appreciate that. 😉  Anyway, for those who just can't handle GameStop's trade-in values anymore, you should definitely give it a shot.

Original Story:

How many of you have complained about the prices of used games – and how much you get for trade-ins – at GameStop? Wouldn't you like a better option?

Enter Glyde , a new resource for buying and selling movies, video games, CDs and books. Former eBay Motors founder and chief Simon Rothman started Glyde in an effort to give consumers a faster, easier way to purchase and sell any number of entertainment-based products. If you wish to sell your video game, for instance, it will be listed on their site within 10 seconds and if you want to buy something, it's a simple, "single-click" process. According to a BusinessWeek article, Rothman got the idea when "decompressing" at home in Ohio, where he found out that many people really didn't do anything online in regards to buying and selling. Many simply said it involved either too much hassle or too much time, and the idea in general was a little off-putting; i.e, a lack of trust in online commerce. At the same time, Rothman figured there had to be around $300 billion worth of unused media collecting dust in people's homes – that's a large number – and so, the idea for Glyde was born.

Since then, Rothman set off to collaborate with a one-time co-founder of Excite and former Charles River Ventures partner in Mark Wong-VanHaren, all in an effort to reduce the "friction" involved with the online buying/selling process. Feel free to check out their site and give it a try; it's faster than eBay and cheaper than both Amazon and GameStop (usually). See what you think!