Dibs: Your Local Community Marketplace

How it Works

Dibs helps you buy and sell stuff within your local community.

It works just like a community bulletin board -- just more organized, effective and discreet.

Your post is displayed only to people looking in your neighborhood, so you won't have to ship your couch to someone 2,000 miles away (unless you want to).

We work everywhere, so you can post stuff even if you live on the remotest of sand dunes in the Mojave.

We make it really easy to post your photos and communicate with potential buyers, without revealing your personal information.

Easy Steps to Selling Your Stuff

Post your item for sale

People send offers to you

You accept the best offer...

...and make arrangements for pickup.

What We Do

For Sellers:

Do you find big auction sites too competitive and impersonal? We think people are more than just their feedback scores.
Have you ever found selling via auction sites takes too long? You can accept any offer, any time.
Do you hate having to pack and ship things you sell? Your item is visible only to people looking in your area. Plus, you're in control of who you sell to, so you can select a local buyer who will pick up.
Do you have trouble tracking the dozens of emails when you sell through local classifieds web sites? We organize your questions and offers without the hassles of emails.
Are you tired of getting phone calls and emails after you've already sold the item? We don't let other people bug you about an item you have already sold.

You also get nice URLs to help you advertise your sale. For example, if your username is johnsmith, your personal site is http://johnsmith.dibs.net, which will display just your own items.

For Buyers:

Want to find all gold-plated pocket watches within 20 miles of Baltimore? It's a few easy clicks with drilldown searching.
Do you hate being outbid at the last second? Dibs allows you to make an offer and set it to expire.
Did the seller forget to mention if that DVD player is used? Easily ask the seller a question before you make an offer.
Do you think the seller should take into consideration factors other than what you'll pay? Offer to trade something or list other enticements in your offer's comments.

The Future

Dibs was launched in July, 2007, with basic functionality. There are many more features in the works, including:

Branded vanity sites: Customize the colors and graphics on your personal site
RSS feeds: Subscribe to search results.
Saved searches: Name and re-run your searches.
Community Groups: Are you a student? Or do you collect board games? Start a trading group and organize online group sales.
Item characteristics: Make more details about items available through search drilldown.
Localization: ¿Habla Español? We'll have a Dibs just for you.

Naturally, the future is not written in stone and these ideas may shift as the community grows. If you have a great idea to improve Dibs, send us your feedback

Who

Kevin at waterfall Hi, I'm Kevin. When not posing near waterfalls, I'm a web developer living and working in Santa Clara, California. The site you are looking at is an honest-to-goodness labor of love, the result of countless hours of effort over several months. I recently left my safe, reliable job to bring Dibs out of the shadows, a decision that was difficult to make but so far has been one of the best decisions of my life. The best decision of my life, however, was to marry my wife Kimberly last year. Without her support and occasional kicks in the butt, this might have been another hobby project lost in my hard drive.

Technology

I like to say I singlehandedly wrote Dibs, but the truth is this site owes its existence to the thousands of contributors to the following open source projects.