Edgeio is eBay killer? (and DIY spy rock)

In today's IT Blogwatch, we look to the edge(io) as an Ebay killer?  Not to mention DIY "spy rock"   ...

It appears to be early days but some are claiming that Edgeio is an Ebay killer.  Jeremiah Owyang needs to get to know the correct name of the new offering "I'm seeing some conversations around a new "Ebay Killer" called Edegio that's soon to emerge Read Tom's sneak peak as well as AMCP Tech Blog's write up. Check out Business Week's write up as well. Read more at the official edegio blog." [Get it right Jeremiah, it is Edge-io.] "it appears that the proposed model includes utilizing 'consumer' content platforms such as blogs with some specific tags (Structured blogging) to bypass the world's largest garage sale, Ebay --in short, it's cutting out the middleman and connecting buyers and sellers directly, as well as providing an index on their master site ...  I've got a lot of questions ... What's the benefit to the consumer ... How do users obtain 'trust' ... How will payment be handled? ... What if craigs list start to input and output RSS feeds [there are many more questions in his blog] ... I signed up for the beta at edegio, as I want to learn more (plus I have a patio table and chair set, I'd like to sell)."

» Todd, Geek News Central:  "I spent about a hour exploring edgeio last night in the very late evening hours, and must say that I am impressed. The concept is beyond simple, the next time you have something to sell don't go to ebay and sell it and pay all kinds of ridiculous fees, use your pre-established website ...  for free ...  the next time you have a service to offer or something to sell, post a weblog entry with the details, then tag the article with the word "listing". The edgeio site will be on the lookout on various weblog search services for the tag "listing" and as soon as it sees it edgeio will automatically aggregate the post and classify the listing in a category ... add info to your profile including your flickr, linkedin accounts and others to establish who you are ... I have a pile of stuff I would like to sell, but don't have time for ebay or craigslist, but I do have time to go and post something on my own website helps build my brand, and keeps me from paying all of these little fees associated with some of the auction services out there. Very powerful and I look forward to the edgeio official launch."

» Steve Borsch: "There was a registration hiccup on the site this morning so I'm waiting to actually try it out, but the value proposition seems cool. Simply tag something you want to list (for sale, etc.) on your blog, and edgeio can watch for it, track it, display it, and "Voila!"...your thingamajig/doohickey is listed. Valuable? YES. Effort, energy and time investment? Yes. Will the blogosphere embrace just one new tag (Listing) if it's incredibly useful? Probably ...  Just like the first dotcom adventure where there were an enormous number of really valuable companies started doing amazing things, it was nearly impossible to keep track of all of them and even to fully figure out what they did. I fear that Web 2.0 value propositions will never be heard in the noise of all the rest of them out there and never gain the traction they need to survive."

» Mathew Ingram: "the fact that the same people who write blogs about cool startups are often people who are involved in other startups, which are then blogged by others, and so on ...  Although their positions have shifted around during the day, they are all about Mike Arrington - but from two different vantage points. Some are about his great party (which was held for Robert Scoble and Shel Israel’s book Naked Conversations) and others are about Edgeio.com, his startup ... hey are almost all raves. The posts about the party are raves (even, surprisingly, some from people who couldn’t make it), and the ones about Edgeio.com are almost all raves as well, although to be fair there are a few questions ... But Dan Farber’s post, as my old sparring partner Scott Karp notes, sums up the tone of breathless enthusiasm ... The point is that at the moment the lines can get pretty blurry in the old blogosphere, especially for those in Silly-con Valley - and no, I don’t feel that way just because I don’t get invited to Mike’s parties (and am too far away to go anyway). I think it’s a lingering problem people will have to confront in one way or another if Web 2.0 is going to get ahead in the credibility game.

» Stowe Boyd's blog could be biased, or not: "(Michael is a friend, and I am in fact staying at his house tonight, and I am not reimbursing him for that ... I am not providing independent or unbiased advice here. Beware) ... The Edgeio concept is a perfect example of the edge dissolving the center ... All I have to do is a/ register with Edgeio, including pointing my feed their way, and b/ tag or categorize my post as a 'listing'. Edgeio does the rest, aggregating my post along with thousands of others, and aggregating based on the other indicators latent or explicit in the post. The company plans to make its slice by offering eBay-style options to increase the likelihood of being found first by searchers, like top placement in lists, bolding, adding photos, and so on."

Buffer overflow:

• Guy Kawasaki: How to Suck Up to a Blogger
  
• Andrew Kramer: Death to SNMP Final
• Christopher Blizzard: olpc software
• Journeyman: Is this in your toolkit?
• Bob Hablutzel: The danger of design as architecture
• Mark Evans: Blogburst: An Odd Reponse by Old Media
• Ed Burnette: Browser wars 3: IE7 beta no match for Firefox
• Tim Bray: Un-Fascist Business
• Martin McKeay: Back from RSA, going through the piles of stuff
• Ken Mingis: Is that a worm in your Apple?
• Larry Medina: ILM isn't even clear to it's OWN user community
• Global News Update: Friday, Feb. 17, 2006
• Martin MC Brown: Quickeys 3.1.1 is Universal Binary
• Shark Tank: Now THAT'S what we call real estimating
• Eric Ogren: Can we put Bill and John together?
• Douglas Schweitzer: Well, we all knew it would eventually happen
• Martin MC Brown: Intel migration will be a long haul

And finally...  DIY "spy rock"

Richi Jennings (has gone to another timezone, temporarily, so the antipodean is blogging this week) is an independent technology and marketing consultant, specializing in email, blogging, Linux, and computer security. A 20 year, cross-functional IT veteran, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. Contact Richi at blogwatch@richi.co.uk. Also contributing to today's post: Judi Dey, our very own Antipodean.