Monkey on Wordpress

Let’s start right off the bat with me saying all that I heard of Jason Calacanis’ Mahalo made me not like it the least bit. Why? I just got a vibe, but I have been pleasantly wrong in the past so no reason this can’t be one of those instances, right? It seemed to me to be yet another search engine and really, creating a search engine now is suicide no matter how good you are. Does anyone use Clusty? Chances are most people use Google or MSN or Yahoo! and not much more beside a Wikipedia search from time to time.

Web 2.0 tested, Hippie approved.

So, this is what I get Mahalo to be: a people powered search engine. This should be wonderful. Let’s take a look at the start page.

Now, let’s take a look at Spock. What is Spock? Obvious planetary jokes aside, it’s a tag-based people search.

Looking at the start pages, they both give off the “I wan to be Google but cooler” vibe and it’s a toss up, I call it a tie, 1 point each.

Let’s get to the meat and potatoes here: the search. First up, Robert Scoble:

The page on Mahalo gave me links to the Mahalo top 10 which is…a feature. It’s not really that useful a feature, almost like they take the top Google results for the term and put it in there.

Below there is a professional profile. This must be where the actual human power comes in and boy must this be accurate. Mahalo intends to keep the top 10, 000 terms done by humans and I just think this will not get very far but let’s save criticism for later.

To be quite honest, maybe you can see where I am coming from with this when you go to the page, but this just doesn’t seem to be useful - it’s a page of links that are supposed to be in some helpful order but it doesn’t do it well. I can see that the people in charge of these pages do a search on Wikipedia and blogs as well as on services such as Technorati or Twitter and throw the links in under some classification. It seems to be a big, jumbled mess from a user standpoint.

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Spock actually seems better off. We’re presented with a bunch of tags that are useful. Why? Because I can click on one tag that is associated with Robert and find other people. I did this with “technical evangelist” and found Dave Winer and Chris Messina among others. In using it I’ve also realized it’s a good, quick way to find out who people are. Sure, I’ve always heard about this Dave Winer guy, but I never really cared to know anything about why I was always hearing about him, I assumed he and Scoble were camping buddies or something.

A really nice thing is the mini profile on the side of the page. Sure it is basically Yanked from Wikipedia but it’s useful because I may just need basic information on people and don’t want to sift through various wikis.

Spock also has a feature for a bunch of links called “On The Web” and I think Mahalo has the upper hand considering the fact that they at least attempt to divide their information.

Are you keeping track of the points? My head hurts too much to keep giving it out, all points have been revoked.

It’s obvious that Robert Scoble will have a well done profile, after all, he is who he is, so I decided to go for someone who might be less well known by these techies.

I decided to look for Rihanna on Mahalo and Spock.

The profile on Spock was great, had tags for the person as well as Wikipedia info as I showed you with Scoble. I can see the use of Spock being when you need to find out basically who people are. You may not want to read an entire wiki to get the informatio when Spock does it efficiently enough, I guess.

The Mahalo page…is a bunch of links. I suppose if they had the profile container like Spock the page would look more appealing to me, but it doesn’t and you know this fickle Web 2.0 crowd - one look at your page and they’re out. Oh, silly me, what was I saying, there is a profile-ish thing on the page up in the top right-hand corner.

Thanks for the guide note! I can tell a lot of time went into it. Also, the spelling error adds a more personal touch. Or is it just that the site is really cool with the gamer/forum lingo so they use “teh” throughout?

It’s safe to say Spock does this way better than Mahalo and Mahalo is essentially shooting themselves in the foot by using these people.

A Word On Usability

Spock is easy to use, really. It is using tags in a way to help people and I honestly think that it’s something that Google could even benefit from, the same goes for Wikipedia. In fact, either one of these entities could probably utilize Spock as some sort of “alternative”, so maybe an acquisition will occur, that or a blatant rip-off. As for Mahalo…it’s a website but why do I need a legend now for this site? I don’t care about this, don’t tell me which links are the best, just put the best links or don’t say anything. Make the user experience as painless as possible, I do not need a learning curve for a search engine.

In all honesty, I can see people using Spock occasionally but Wikipedia seems to be the best way to go. I remember Jason Calacanis saying how simple it would be to get people to moderate Wikipedia since the debate about Wikipedia’s accuracy was popping up. It seems this is what Jason is intending to do is just that.

Spock has me thinking, I can do a search for “inventor” then get a list of inventors. Suppose I am doing a project and need to find an inventor, a Google search doesn’t give you a list of people who are inventors Spock does. I can search on Spock then get detailed information on Wikipedia. Nice. Maybe I don’t “get” Mahalo and I’d love to give it another go if it is I haven’t been using.

Just a note, I have 2 invites to Spock, leave a comment and they’re yours.

While I will continue to work with edgeio and their marketplace product, I am interested in more and more betas. I already have another product that I have yet to see anyone write about as extensively as I did with edgeio, or write much of anything for that matter. It’ll be a while before I can understand the product enough to write about it, but until then, let me know about any products you’ve found or are interested in having me look at. I believe I have a problem with signing up for things.

This was unexpected but very much welcomed - I made it on to techmeme for my “review” for edgeio’s marketplace beta. Sure, it wasn’t fair to call it a review, but this is an interesting product and I’d love to at least attempt to give some constructive criticism of the product.

Here’s a quick look at some of the coverage:

Keith Teae’s blog

Edgeio Blog

Snipperoo Blog 

And of course, TechMeme, which I’m very excited about. More on the product as I get time to play with it and understand it better. Also, the first listing on my board was placed, and feel free to post something there. A lot of time was invested to learn the basics and I intend to invest some more. To the new Feed Subscribers, welcome!

Edgeio was launched last year and was hyped as being the craigslist killer. While it’s uncertain if this new company can uproot the foothold that craigslist has managed to maintain right now in the online classifieds arena, over time we may see a significant shift in where people place their classified ads on-line thanks to edgeio’s marketplace tool.

This free service allows anyone to create a listing board for whatever they want, is fully hosted by edgeio and offered with a risk-free offer. Make your board free for people to use and pay nothing, have it incur a fee and pay only 20% of what you make, while edgeio provides the infrastructure, the web-space and bandwidth.

I was invited to join the edgeio marketplaces and decided to make my own board, all the cool kids are doing it, and I just want to be cool like GigaOM and Techcrunch.

Getting Started

First thing I did was use the “secret URL” and was greeted with a box that I had to enter the user-name and password provided in the email telling me I could use the service. Fair enough. This is the page I was brought to.

So, let’s get to filling this thing out.

Here’s a close-up of all the areas on the first page:

This is where you would put in the Name and Description of your board. This will vary based on what your board is about. Reading the FAQ, this is what people will see when looking for an actual board to post information on, but not on the board itself.

Here is where you enter the URL that you want your board to be identified with. This cannot be changed and this is only because the board is hosted by edgeio.

Below that we can see where you put the URL of your website. The reason for this is at the top it will say who the board is for. This cannot be left out but if you have no website, simply put in the URL from above, ending in .edgeio.net

The last thing in the above image is where you choose exactly what type of board you want to do. Choosing different options changes the fields that people use to enter information when posting an item, so choosing cars and vehicles will give you fields such as make and mileage of the vehicle, while housing would obviously omit fields such as mileage - not sure what the case would be with motor-homes though! :p

This is where you will choose the language for your board. I only speak English, guess what I chose? Below you can add more categories for people to choose to post in when putting something on your board, helping organize things better. So, if you are choosing to do a board for jobs, you can refine it by putting Administrative,Teaching, etc.

This is where you will choose if you want to allow other people to submit to your job board. My understanding is that this will work the same way you are creating this board with edgeio. People will make their own board, but it will be submitted to your own board. If you’re doing a paid board, this would be a good way to make money through affiliation. Below that you can see where you can post to other job boards, such as crunchboard, etc. Since this is a free board I am doing, I am opting to make it closed. Agree to the terms of service and continue to the second page.

Here is the second page in its entirety.

And now a look at the different areas:

The first thing are these two upload options. The first is a logo that will be used on the actual board. The second option, is, by my understanding of the FAQ, what people will see when looking for a board to post/at affiliate sites.

This is where you can opt to customize your board with CSS. With this, you can make your board look like anything you want, really, or to blend in and look as though it is part of your site. I’m not a coder, so I’ll leave this as is.

This is where you can preview the changes you may have made on the site, very handy. Now, onto the third page.

Here is that third page in its entirety.

And now for a closer look:

The third page is all about editing and placing a widget on your site.

Here as you can see, you have the option to choose how many listings you want with the widget. You can edit how big it will be, so you can fit it snugly into the sidebar of your blog if you wish, adjusting the width and height to your desire.

You also have the ability to change the colours of the links, text and border, all helping the widget to blend into whatever page you aim to place it in. As I’ve said before, I don’t do any sort of coding, and I like blue, so I’m leaving it as it is.

Here you can edit the colour of the background, or even place an image as the background. Your imagination is the limit here.

But how will your masterpiece look? Have no fear, you can preview the widget you’re making to the right of where you edit the information. You can also save changes, and revert to older changes if you’ve made errors.

Below you can see the code to place said widget into your blog with simple copy and paste.

When you’re done, go on to the next page.

Wait, that’s it? We’re done? Well, sort of. Here’s what you’re met with, the final product in terms of the backend.

So, want to see what it is you’re shown? Sure you do! Here we go.

The first thing you will see are all the active listings on your board, you know, stuff actually on there.

Pending listings are listings which have yet to be approved or denied. When doing a free listing, you can make it so that anything is posted on the site, or you have to manually accept it into the system. I like this. Below that are rejected and expired listings. Listings can stay on for a maximum of 30 days but you can edit if you want the maximum for your site to be a week etc. Users can simply post their items again if they want after the 30 days.

Right next to all the info for the current month you will see information for the previous month, good for comparative purposes.

Below you’ll see some financial information. I’m doing a free board so this will always be zero for me, but if you were charging, you would see all the information you would want to know, how much you’re making per post and how much edgeio makes per post. Edgeio works on an 80%-20% split, not too shabby - the 80% goes to you.

Next to this we’ll find information such as the board’s URL and the URL for posting new items.

Similar to the financial information above, this gives you more information for the month.

And again we have information for the previous month. Below all of this is where we would see all the other boards you have.

The Final Product

So we’ve successfully made the board and now we want to get it moving, what do we do now? Good question. You can see the final product right here. Sadly, by default it’s not much to look at. Take a look. I’m hoping for templates to be available for those who can’t code anything.

Besides that, what about actually getting content onto the site? Well, this is where I’m thinking I have a bit to learn. There’s a link to the top right hand corner of the site telling you to post an item.

When pressed, we’re met with this:

Here’s the problem, nobody who has tried the board knows what is supposed to do here. So I’m calling on you, the readers to help test this out. I’ve made this board where you can post jobs, houses, cars, personals, and an option to post anything you are looking for. So go on, use it. Help test this thing out. If you can’t post, try creating an edgeio account and then posting to the board, leave a little note in the comments if you have anything to say in terms of use-ability.

In case you can’t find it, use THIS LINK to post an image, and here is the LINK TO THE BOARD.

Suggestions

I did this whole thing to basically understand edgeio marketplaces as well as to give insight to anyone who may be interested in the product. So far, it is shaping up to be an excellent tool to provide a free/cheap tool for people to offer listing services to their readers. With that said, it is not without its issues which I am sure can be fixed. It’ll be interesting to learn how to properly utilize this product, and if you know of anywhere using this product effectively, feel free to point it out to me in the comments. Below are a few suggestions/problems I saw and encountered, and I realize some stuff may just be my own ignorance.

• It’s not abundantly clear that an edgeio account is needed to create a listing board
• It’s not clear how to post items on the listing board
• Not clear where to go after you’ve created your listing board
• No templates for dull looking final product - problem for those who can’t code
• I wasn’t able to change my password
• No way to have “moderators” for the board - I’d like to give someone access to edit the CSS for me with their own account, or give people access to accept or deny listings for me.

I’ll updating this with any comments I can get from readers, and I’ll be updating once I can find fixes to any things mentioned.