SmartShopper is Shopping 2.0

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a deal man. I don't buy a roll of tape without a deal. So when I heard about Israeli-based SmartShopper, I took a look. SmartShopper is a browser plug-in (currently IE only, FF Q4) which automatically recognizes any Web page which has a product on it and instantly shows you the prices for that product from a variety of Web merchants. To find out more, I spoke with SmartShopper CEO Oren Dobronsky. My notes are below:

• The add-on is only .5 mb in size
• Automatically recognizes any product or travel offering
• Oren's mission statement is to, "make the comparative shopping experience better and easier"
• There are no ads in the add-on
• Two million active users in the last month
• SmartShopper is one of only twelve applications that are trusted by TRUSTe
• The team is made up of 20 people in Israel and Oren in NYC - they are working to open a NYC office in Q4 2007
• Oren claims that it's the next generation of comparative searching engines
• Funding comes from a few angel investors
• August 2007 is their first profitable month
• They are working on some major distribution deals - which will be announced soon

Their revenue model is interesting. Merchants pay a CPC to be listed - however there is no advantage as to who pays more because sorting is by item price. I will try it as I make more online purchases and report back with an update.