Microsoft's new classifieds

The Microsoft company is planning on debuting a classified service that seems like a more personalized version of ebay to me, according to this CNN.com story.

My big question about stuff like this is market saturation. Ebay is obviously a widely-used site, and although I've never used craigslist it seems like those two and Microsoft's version, called "Fremont", do basically the same thing.

Will they all take away users from each other? It can't be that expensive to support sites like that with advertising, but at the same time, what's the point of creating rival networks along those lines?

Vindication

This gem was in the NYT Sunday edition.

I've been critical of the wikipedia idea all along, only to be reassured that the feedback loop that accompanies a dumb network like that would go a long ways toward ensuring that bad information wasn't disseminate d on the net as truth. Now, a real-world example of someone who has been wronged by the almighty wiki.

I respect this Seigenthaler guy, and the way he handled the bad information. The original poster who said he was involved in the JFK assassination made their post anonymously -- another feature of wikipedia I don't especially like -- and it would have taken quite a court battle to find out the identity of the poster. As I argued in my law paper this fall -- and the Delaware Suporeme Court agreed with me in Cahill v. John Doe -- people who post material on the internet should have the right to remain anonymous.

Friday discussion

Props to Hannah and Amber for Friday's discussion...probably the most enjoyable and informative one we've had all semester, even though we had two fairly random and mutually exclusive readings.

I think the best part was talking about emergency responses and how the web can make it easier for people to learn about emergencies. My general response to the Wired article about an online clearinghouse for emergency information that was automatically sent to places like malls and schools (it's undergoing a trial period in Portland, Ore.) was the same as a lot of other things we've talked about when it comes to using the web as a clearinghouse for information. The best comparison for this system, as Dr. Carroll pointed out, is it's basically a wiki for emergency information. As with wikis, I'm leery of a system where anybody can add information, as I have pointed out here on my blog before. It's a tradeoff...if anybody can submit emergency information, you're going to need a feedback loop wherein information can be verified by numerous people, thus affirming the power of a dumb network. However, in the time it would take for a feedback loop to work, it would defeat the purpose of alerting people to an emergency.

Thje other major problem with this system is the fact that there are still lots of people, even in America, who aren't connected to the internet. I have no data to back this up, but I have a hunch the majority of the people who were stranded in the poorest neighborhoods in New Orleans when Katrina hit weren't web-enabled.