SwoopThat.com was an online

textbook A textbook is a book containing a comprehensive compilation of content in a branch of study with the intention of explaining it. Textbooks are produced to meet the needs of educators, usually at educational institutions. Schoolbooks are textbook ...

price comparison service A comparison shopping website, sometimes called a price comparison website, price analysis tool, comparison shopping agent, shopbot, aggregator or comparison shopping engine, is a vertical search engine that shoppers use to filter and compare prod ...

. It was based in

San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United State ...

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

, and specialized in

college A college (Latin: ''collegium'') is an educational institution or a constituent part of one. A college may be a degree-awarding tertiary educational institution, a part of a collegiate or federal university, an institution offerin ...

textbooks but included

high school A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper seconda ...

textbooks as well. The company's "books by course" search engine let students input their class schedules, see all the required textbooks for those schedules, and find the cheapest online sources of those books. The search engine also included a textbook exchange feature through which students could buy and sell books from other students. The website also included a textbook buyback platform through which students could sell their textbooks back to online vendors. ''SwoopThat'' was featured in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'', on the website of the ''

Today Show ''Today'' (also called ''The Today Show'' or informally, ''NBC News Today'') is an American news and talk morning television show that airs weekdays from 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. on NBC. The program debuted on January 14, 1952. It w ...

'', on the website of '' Computerworld'' magazine and the

weblog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

'' lifehacker.com''.

History and business model

SwoopThat was founded by students from Claremont McKenna College and Harvey Mudd College. It originally existed as a product search engine with an emphasis on local products and stores. It later changed to focus on

textbooks A textbook is a book containing a comprehensive compilation of content in a branch of study with the intention of explaining it. Textbooks are produced to meet the needs of educators, usually at educational institutions. Schoolbooks are textbook ...

based on a books by course model. It added course and textbook data from over 2,300 colleges in the United States. Through ''SwoopThat'', students could compare prices for new books, used books, rental books and

ebooks An ebook (short for electronic book), also known as an e-book or eBook, is a book publication made available in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices. Alt ...

. Renamed HubEdu in 2012, it was bought by

Rafter A rafter is one of a series of sloped structural members such as wooden beams that extend from the ridge or hip to the wall plate, downslope perimeter or eave, and that are designed to support the roof shingles, roof deck and its associated ...

shortly after.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Swoopthat.Com Comparison shopping websites Product searching websites Book selling websites Online marketplaces of the United States Internet properties established in 2009