I caught the second half of this month’s BayCHI program and saw the presentation by John Buckman (of Magnatune and BookMooch). John led an entertaining interaction reviewing the evolution of applications he’s designed and built.

I was previously aware of the interesting approach MagnaTune takes toward selling music, but I left very excited about BookMooch, a service for trading in books you don’t want anymore, in return for credit that can be used to get books you do want. I have a ton of books stacked up that aren’t worth my time to sell. I’ve long-intended to give them away to friends, but that’s time-consuming as well. Trading them in for books I haven’t read seems even better. Has anyone else tried BookMooch?

Services like BookMooch, LaLa’s CD-trading service, and Netflix (essentially the world’s largest DVD library) take advantage of inefficiencies in other markets, impact demand for both physical goods like books and CDs and digital goods like e-books and mp3s, and provide customers alternatives to limitations on their media experience effected by DRM.

I wish I could figure out some sensible way to work John into the >play conference, as I thought his presentation style was fun and engaging (I’m guessing the audience members who kept interrupting him agree). Maybe we could talk him into scheduling a visit with us in Berkeley during the school year (please let me know if you would enjoy talking with him).

P.S. The anal-retentive side of me loves how he thinks about all sorts of little things, like using http://bookmooch.com by default instead of http://www.bookmooch.com. It’s never been clear to me why so many sites include the “www.”