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2/6/06 - Edgeioverhyped
THIS POST HAS BEEN MOVED TO MY NEW BLOG WHERE YOU CAN COMMENT / TELL ME WHY I'M
WRONG. Link
I recently received my invitation to have a look at Michael Arrington's
Edgeio, and I really don't like it.
I've mentioned before that I think that the whole classifieds space is not the
best utilization of the web, and not an exciting space, but their are other
reasons:
1. The Name: Edgeio is the second worst named site on the net, the first
is edge.io, which apparently was dropped
before Arrington started hyping this thing.
2. The Real TechCrunch Motive: It's pretty clear that all along
TechCrunch was meant solely as a
marketing tool for edgeio, Arrington has developed legions of fans who are now
willing to praise anything that he touches, which has meant a lot of hype over
something that's not that great.
3. It's lack of usability for the mainstream: this is not something that
anyone without a blog is even able to use. I don't think that the Edgeio
gang did their homework on this one. I would like to see data on the
number of ebay sellers that are also bloggers, or at least rough data on the
percentage of bloggers that are involved in ecommerce.
4. Tagging: Not only do you have to blog, you also have to know how to
use tags. Not hard, but most don't use them, and tagging makes this such
an easy target for copying. As I understand it, Edgeio is going to aggregate all
blogs that have the tag "listing" and then organize them and present them on the
Edgeio site. Why couldn't another scrape site do the same thing? Why
couldn't ebay do this? They can and if it catches on they will.
Worst of al for Edgeio, they'll do it right before the model hits the
mainstream, so that their users don't have to switch.
Those are my main problems with the site, and I haven't even mentioned the
potential to be bogged down with spam.
What I do like: The design, it is a great looking site. I also like that
Edgeio is taking a chance, and is making blogs a little more useful. Of course,
at the risk of sounding like Levar
Burton, don't take my word for it, try it out yourself.
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