Edgeioverhyped

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.