Edgeio's New Blog Platform
Posted by: Rob Hof on March 24, 2006
When Edgeio soft-launched a few weeks ago, it got a lot of deserved attention for its novel idea of vacuuming up classified-ad listings logically tagged “listing” on millions of blogs and presenting them on its own site. But I mentioned that it faced at least two big challenges: spam and the fact that a blog isn’t the first place most people will think of listing an item, if they even have a blog.
Cofounder Mike Arrington admits Edgeio, which now has about 20,000 listings from 1,124 cities, hasn’t been tested on the spam issue yet. But today, it has a couple of new answers to the second issue. For one, Edgeio has added a box that lets you add items from your blog directly on Edgeio, so you don’t have to go the trouble of tagging it as a listing on your own blog.
But even more interesting, you can also create a listing on Edgeio, so you don’t actually have to have a blog. More interesting yet, creating that listing automatically creates a listing blog for you. That way, you’ve got a dedicated blog for listings, eliminating the need to put a classified listing on a blog that has nothing to do with selling stuff.
Essentially, Edgeio is creating a storefront for you—a sort of eBay Store for individuals and small sellers. Larger sellers will want their own Web site, of course, but this seems like a very easy way to sell stuff with minimal fuss. Later, Edgeio plans to add specific forms for classifieds, jobs, housing, and other categories.
