Edgeio.com Uses RSS on Websites to Sell Products

RSS is used to subscribe to blog content, or any content that will travel through an RSS feed. It's a protocol for transferring a very simple set of items (author, date, email, title, description, blog entry ...) between two machines. RSS is free and nobody owns it. Now add the ability to tag specific content for sale in RSS feeds and create a special search engine just to mine these tags from the RSS content, and you get Edgeio.

This concept has more than one of my clients excited. Here is a page from their website that explains what they do at a high level. Visit www.edgeio.com for details.

What is edgeio?

Anyone can publish content on edgeio. With an RSS-enabled website, you can publish items on your own site and then direct edgeio to index and organize your content. You can also publish items directly on edgeio using a listings blog. Either way, publishers remain in control. No more listing fees, complicated forms to fill in, and, for RSS publishers, no struggling to keep content synchronized across multiple websites. Just post it, use appropriate tags, and edgeio takes care of the rest.

A blogger can publish an item for sale and have it listed on edgeio within a matter of seconds. An auto dealer with an RSS-enabled website can publish their inventory in real time to edgeio's network. Using tags indicating location, realtors can reach buyers in specific communities around the world. Podcasters and video bloggers can use tags to describe their work, making it easily discoverable in the edgeio network of websites. Individuals without their own RSS-enabled website can publish directly onto edgeio with a listings blog that edgeio creates for you.

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Is this an eBay killer? Maybe not. It's yet another channel for developing a relationship with clients. Since this is based on the subscription model that RSS uses, we're not going to be spammed to death by Internet Marketing vendors - well, let's hope not. I'm curious to learn more and hope to sell some of the excess audio gear I have. I'll post my results when I do that and let you know.

Tom