I like this except for the crowdsourcing part. I'd rather have it done as a paid-for service somehow. I realize that it's hard because you'd have to constantly check, but still.

I've been thinking about something similar to this - particularly for me in relation to when bands bring out new albums or new TV series come out. I was thinking I'd probably tackle it a vertical at a time and find a source for the information (e.g. last.fm for albums, IMDB for movies/TV series) that can be put to use automatically. I reckon the simplest way to monetize this would be affiliate links in the alerts - the click through is obviously going to be pretty high (people have actively said they're interested in something) but I've never seen affiliates as a great source of revenue.

I thought of something similar for game releases, particularly indie games. Didn't want to have to trawl through a bunch of sites to find updates for the.

Also, there was something posted a while back that did music albums, but I think the guy was shutting it down/open sourcing it.

Either way, glad to see I'm not alone.

Sort of like If This Then That but with a wider range of uses, right? Sounds interesting. Also, I don't get the last bit - How would you know if a user is honestly updating the request or not?

I guess it would be a lot like stack overflow. The user who requested the notification would have to confirm the answer is correct.

I think his idea would need to be more flexible than what ifttt allows you to be.

This is actually a compelling idea—I've been kicking around a similar idea for a while, where you'd like to buy something (e.g. a 2TB SATA drive) but only when it goes on sale below a certain price threshold. The problem is: what's the business model (i.e. where does the money come from)?

Have you checked out Priceonomics? They're a YC startup that gives you analytics on the market price of a product and send you notifications when the item is available for a good price.

I have not, but I am so not surprised that someone else had the idea, probably made it better, and is in business.

I would say the whole thing is a monetizable business. To have good data, you'd need a mix of human and tech input. So why not charge $x for y number of updates? or charge for specific searches that requires more human work? or charge for a premium account that shows price fluctuations of certain items for the last 6 months?

You may be interested in http://camelcamelcamel.com/ for this sort of thing. Uses Amazon to track historical high and low price points so you can get a good idea of when to expect sales. You can set up a trigger to notify you when it reaches a certain price, too.

You may be looking for decide.com