2 April 2009
For immediate release

Santa Clara, CA— This morning, StreetPrices released the world's first Twitter bot that lets users compare prices on a wide variety of consumer products, from TVs to digital cameras to power tools. The bot, which uses the Twitter username howmuchis, gives shoppers the current best prices on millions of items, in tiny messages of 140 characters or less.

The howmuchis bot makes it easy for shoppers to compare prices from inside brick-and-mortar stores by sending a short message from their Twitter-enabled phone. They may still buy their TV or camera in-store, but now they'll know exactly how much they're paying for the convenience.

howmuchis is also useful when shoppers are on the go, or when the conversation is too good to fire up the computer. Instead, Twitter users can send off a quick tweet to @howmuchis, and get the answer fast.

How does it work? Tweet it a part number or product name, and it will tweet you back the three lowest prices, including merchant ratings and direct links to the item on each merchant's site.

For example, tweeting

@howmuchis Samsung LN46A650

will get you two tweets back:

@you Samsung LN46A650 http://tinyurl.com/cwtjxq | lowest $1449.00 FotoConnection C- http://tinyurl.com/ce4q45
and
@you $1495.00 at buydig.com A http://tinyurl.com/cxat4a | $1549.99 at Adorama Inc. A+ http://tinyurl.com/d9pebp

This means you can make smart buying decisions from anywhere you can tweet.

Bots are gaining popularity on Twitter, and developers have created a wide variety of useful bots. Twitter users can use bots to check the weather, add events to Google Calendar, keep to-do lists, and calculate tips. Now, with howmuchis, Twitter users can also compare prices from anywhere they can tweet. The price comparison is based on the StreetPrices database, which tracks current prices on millions of products.

For more information, see our twitter bot documentation or contact StreetPrices at 650.988.1100.

StreetPrices, founded in 1997 by Stephen Heise, was the third shopping comparison website, and the inventor of price graphs and price alerts. It offers great prices and unique features, including a "search by specs" tool and its own merchant rating system.

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