An online trading community provides participants with a structured method for trading, bartering, or selling goods and services. These communities often have

forum Forum or The Forum (plural forums or fora) may refer to: Common uses * Forum (legal), designated space for public expression in the United States *Forum (Roman), open public space within a Roman city **Roman Forum, most famous example *Internet ...

s and

chatroom The term chat room, or chatroom (and sometimes group chat; abbreviated as GC), is primarily used to describe any form of synchronous conferencing, occasionally even asynchronous conferencing. The term can thus mean any technology, ranging from r ...

s designed to facilitate communication between the members. An online trading community can be likened electronic equivalent of a

bazaar A bazaar () or souk (; also transliterated as souq) is a marketplace consisting of multiple small Market stall, stalls or shops, especially in the Middle East, the Balkans, North Africa and India. However, temporary open markets elsewhere, suc ...

flea market A flea market (or swap meet) is a type of street market that provides space for vendors to sell previously-owned (second-hand) goods. This type of market is often seasonal. However, in recent years there has been the development of 'formal' ...

, or

garage sale A garage sale (also known as a yard sale, tag sale, moving sale and by many other namesSome rarely used names include "attic sale," "basement sale," "rummage sale," "thrift sale," "patio sale," "lawn sale," and "jumble sale".) is an informal ...

History

One of the earliest trading sites on the

internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

(with exception to

eBay eBay Inc. ( ) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that facilitates consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer sales through its website. eBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar in 1995 and became a ...

which accepts cash transactions for all goods) was Game Trading Zone. The

domain name A domain name is a string that identifies a realm of administrative autonomy, authority or control within the Internet. Domain names are often used to identify services provided through the Internet, such as websites, email services and more. As ...

ugtz.com was implemented in an independent

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases sp ...

in the spring 1999. This was a departure from simply listing items on a forum or text document. The database helped traders by showing them a list of potential trading matches, and showed historical transactions as well.

Formal trading communities

A formal trading community consists of a website or network of websites that facilitate and track trade transactions. Some websites, such as the video game trading site Goozex, charge transactional fees per trade, while other similar sites such as GameTZ do not. Key elements of formal trading communities * Transactional tracking * Ratings and feedback system * Content listing, referencing, and matching

Trading communities

There are several community based websites that have a broader scope and lend themselves to a trading environment. *

1UP In video games, a life is a play-turn that a player character has, defined as the period between start and end of play. Lives refer to a finite number of tries before the game ends with a game over. It is sometimes called a chance, a try, rest ...

is a website dedicated to the publishing of news, videos, and other related media dealing with video games. There is a growing section of the site though dedicated the trading of games and DVDs on their message boards. *

Craigslist Craigslist (stylized as craigslist) is an American classified advertisements website with sections devoted to jobs, housing, for sale, items wanted, services, community service, Gig worker, gigs, résumés, and discussion forums. Craig Newmark ...

is a site for posting personal advertisements but many users have found this a less than conventional means of trading goods online with local residents. *Mydvdtrader.com is regarded as being the oldest remaining website dedicated to buying, selling and trading of selected media *

IGN ''IGN'' (formerly ''Imagine Games Network'') is an American video game and entertainment media website operated by IGN Entertainment Inc., a subsidiary of Ziff Davis, Inc. The company's headquarters is located in San Francisco's SoMa distri ...

is another website dedicated to videogame news and media that also has message boards dedicated to online trading. The distinguishing factors being that IGN has a much larger integrated database of games and DVDs in existence that users can add to their collection lists for trade purposes as well as mark the ones they are playing to lock from trade.

General rules of conduct

Some online trading communities have the specific rules adopted by the users of that community, and though they can differ most have settled upon a few standard practices: *The less experienced trader (usually indicated by their feedback or trade history) sends their half first. *It is generally frowned upon by most communities to "thread crap" (A term referring to a user not involved in the pending trade undercutting a trade in progress with either a better deal or reasons for the trade not to take place). *While trading any used items online, be sure to include BOOK OF the condition and quality of the product so as the receiver can determine its overall value.

Trading circle

A trading circle is a form of online trading designed to facilitate viewing of television series and episodic media. Physical media such as videocassettes, DVDs and CDs are exchanged via mail. Each member agrees to pass an episode on to the next member in a timely fashion, thereby allowing all members of the group to view the series. This communal trading method is also used by special interest clubs. Some of these groups (among many) include

anime club An anime club is an organization that meets to discuss, show, and promote anime in a local community setting and can also focus on broadening Japanese cultural understanding. Anime clubs are increasingly found at universities and high schools. Org ...

Trading Portal

Within global financial markets, an

electronic trading platform In finance, an electronic trading platform also known as an online trading platform, is a computer software program that can be used to place orders for financial products over a network with a financial intermediary. Various financial products c ...

gives

investor An investor is a person who allocates financial capital with the expectation of a future Return on capital, return (profit) or to gain an advantage (interest). Through this allocated capital most of the time the investor purchases some specie ...

s who are part the online trading community a greater choice of

stock exchange A stock exchange, securities exchange, or bourse is an exchange where stockbrokers and traders can buy and sell securities, such as shares of stock, bonds and other financial instruments. Stock exchanges may also provide facilities for th ...

s or other trading networks. A Trading Portal within the context of international trading on stock exchanges would be one that offers a selection of online trading platforms to choose from. This can be in the form of information provided on various regulated entities providing this service to stock market traders throughout the world or, alternatively, by way of a list of regulated investment dealers on the web who offer a selection of online trading platforms.

References

Examples

* GameTZ.com - A game trading community, born out of the

Usenet Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it was ...

community in the mid 90s * Goozex - Video game trading community