I received the preview password to EdgeIO.com today, Mike Arrington‘s new project to aggregate all blog posts using the tag 'listing' at a single site, all organized and such as you’d expect from a classifieds site.
Since I’m trying to sell a house and blogging about it, seemed like a perfect opportunity to test it out.
It’s a slick system. I added ‘listing’ to my WordPress categories, flagged the post with it and a handful of other categories, hit Publish in WordPress, and EdgeIO sucked them right in.
After that, I claimed the post and added a handful more tags and the price. I had more luck with the hidden span claim method than the xml-rpc method.
The most interesting bit – despite having the ZIP Code and address throughout the post, EdgeIO didn’t know the location, until I set my location in my profile. Then like magic it was updated. Good thing my current location and the location of the house is the same.
If you have a preview password, you can check out the EdgeIO listing for the house.
The idea that work I’m doing already (writing to my blogs) can be leveraged in a useful way is very powerful. I can see the same type of aggregating-the-edges system for reviews (music, movie, product).
There’s an undercurrent of concern EdgeIO highlights – multiple silos of tag clouds. The same word in Flickr, Technorati, Del.icio.us, Upcoming.org, 43Things, et. al, bring up very different types of information.
EdgeIO has essentially declared ‘listing’ to have a specific, universal meaning (“something for sale”). If another, existing tag cloud agreed – hell – if all of them agreed on the same meaning, EdgeIO turns invisible. Either becoming the enabling technology behind all the other sites (as NavTech is to mapping) or disappearing altogether.