Reason #293 why Myspace is Pure Crap: “This user’s comments are currently disabled. They will be back shortly. Please do NOT email me about this. Just wait it out. -Tom” …oh, Tom. We’re soo not friends anymore. I could also title this post “Thing #28374 You Would Never See on Facebook”.
Just reading this post enrages me. Google isn’t ugly. It’s simple. Craigslist isn’t ugly, it’s content-rich. Purple backgrounds with yellow text on Myspace? That’s ugly. I will agree though, who cares what a blog looks like? You can’t see my pretty header in Bloglines. Blogs are about the content. Don’t judge a book by it’s cover… well, unless that book is Myspace. In that case you’d be right.
I’m moving exclusively to Google Talk. Feel free to add devin.reams at gmail dot com. If I were to do the same analysis I did on MySpace ads on an AIM chat window you’d be as frustrated as I am with wasted space. Anyway, Garett has done more source-code investigating. Interesting indeed. I’m even more interested by the fact that nobody really told me about Yahoo’s voicemail capabilities.
I’ve had time to play with a new service called edgeio. Essentially, it’s a service that enables bloggers to post listings (job, help wanted, housing, etc.) to their blogs. Edgeio then crawls the blogs and finds the posts tagged ‘listing’ and will aggregate them. The service is free to use but will also provide publishers with additional paid services (to help increase exposure).
At first glance the website is a lot to try and navigate. I found myself not noticing some things that I should have. For instance when creating an account it was not very clear to me how to pick my location. I finally figured out that not only do I have to put in the zip code/city but I then have to click the corresponding city that pops up. I figured by putting in the zip I had done my part. This registration process took three times becuase the error message at the top didn’t stand out. I didn’t realize the captcha changed each time. Haha, I do know how to use the interweb, I swear.
The listings are pretty straight forward. If you click the thumbnail you can see that the listing basically pulls the text (‘I would like to sell…’) from the blog entry and any other information (price, location, tags). I had a few thoughts just looking at the listing though. For instance, when I ‘Subscribe’ what kind of information is going to be sent via RSS? I also thought that the ‘report spam’ button would be useful. But, I suspect (read: hope) edgeio will also have some mechanisms in place. I also like the fact that edgeio incorporates ‘Other Profiles’ like ebay and flickr.
Here is my sample listing which you can see to the right (the page where you manage the listing). Within a few seconds of adding my blog to my profile it had the listing added and a comfirmation email in my inbox. Managing listings are pretty straight forward. But, you can’t change any of the content through the edgeio website. From what I can tell all you’re able to do is change your tags, the listing status, and the price. I wasn’t able to determine whether or not an update to the blog means an update to the listing. I haven’t seen my update yet but they claim that once the blog is added it will routinely check up on it (every 24 hours). Luckily I can go to ‘My Edgeio’ and hit ‘Check for new posts’ under the appropriate blog. Interestingly enough my post was updated but I don’t see it on the page (it has the updates on the ‘Manage’ page, though). Update: It just took a little while…
Anyway, I feel this will have some interesting implications on how individual business is done online. No longer do we have to pay a buck to put something on ebay. This seems like craigslist meets web2.0 meets blogs. I’m interested to see what the paid services consist of. I guess my final thought is: will the blogosphere catch on? Personally, I think if I had anything of substance (services, jobs, stuff for sale) to add I would certainly use edgeio. It’d be silly not to.
[tags]tech, web2.0, edgeio, blogging, commerce, listing[/tags]
Yahoo has a lot to learn, I have a feeling the new MSN Search and Win campaign will gather a lot more response. If not, that’s fine, it just helps both Nathan’s odds and mine. I’ve already changed my Firefox search engine from Google to MSN…
Scoble is upset because people are talking more about Google than Microsoft. Nathan is also expressing his concern.
Guys, the reasoning behind all of this is pretty clear. Yes, MSN has a much larger user base than GMail. But, all the popular nerds with blogs, all those guys ‘buzzing’ about Google Domains: they love Google. The people who know what an MX record is don’t really want their domain on MSN Live Messenger nor MSN Live Mail. They want to use the weapon-of-choice for nerds everywhere: GMail. I’ve used both, I express the same sentiment. I’m a Live beta tester, I use the new MSN, I use the new email… I like GMail better.
Oh, and why would people have ever said ‘MSN goes after Outlook’? I’ve used a product called the “MSN Outlook Connector“. Hey, when/if Google comes out with a calendar are we going to get upset because we didn’t mention MSN has one, too?
Put simply, MSN jumped into the email game far too late. I think we all can agree on that. GMail changed the way many people do email and it will always attract the related ‘buzz’.
Okay, guys, for once somebody copied Microsoft. ;-)
Seth almost tricked me. The site he’s referring to is Wikipedia (notably almost identical to MySpace). Click here for the graph.
Yahoo’s incentives to switch suck (for a few reasons). First, I don’t see a single thing that interests me. If Yahoo paid me, I’d gladly switch over and use it (exclusively). I doubt that will happen but hey, I love to complain/rave about anything and everything. Wait, here’s an idea: make your stuff work better than the other guys. How is it easier to spend money on consumers rather than the product? This old quote is straight from the Yahoo Blog “This commitment to being the best should be crystal clear from our investments in talented people, research, innovation and new products“. Where do the incentives fit in that list of investments?
It’s investigative journalism like this that pleases me. Not repetitive nonsense like my website offers. In any case, Garett Rogers at ZDNet thinks GMail may be planning on domain control, maybe even corporate email service?
