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The distributed marketplace

7 comments on The distributed marketplace

The distributed marketplace
: Clay Shirky rightfully and ruthlessly ridicules a “deeply crazy attempt to solve dating” called Socialgrid: You answer a questionnaire, which spits out code (XML/FOAF) you put on your blog so others can find you via Google. This execution is, well, cause of execution.

But there’s something bigger (and for some of us in some businesses, scarier) bubbling up here: The distributed marketplace. Forget sex (for the moment). Think jobs: Employers find employees via Google. Or think the distributed eBay: Who in the world is selling a used iPod or Mustang right now? Or real estate: The distributed roommate finder. Or Yellow Pages: The Google dream of local. Whenever one person wants to find another for a transaction of any sort, can the distributed network bring them together?

I don’t think Socialgrid — or Google — will own this ultimately. Other, more specialized efforts will create their own search engines or, like this one, piggyback on top of Google’s data base. And they will add value (anonymization; bidding for services; communication; content).

All of this is an extension of FOAF and of David Galbraith’s one-line bio and I’ve talked about it before; so have many others (who should take a look at the haughty intellectual property warning Clay quotes).

This is a step (or misstep) in a fundamental shift in society:

Bit by bit, marketplaces will decentralize.

7 responses to “The distributed marketplace”

  1. Niche Avatar
    Niche

    There’s a New York-based start-up called Transparensee that is using a Discovery Search Engine product which could be used to search for things such as online dating, reasturant, wine. http://www.transparensee.com/products/

  2. pb Avatar
    pb

    I’m surprised Google hasn’t done craisglist yet.

  3. phil jones Avatar
    phil jones

    Reminds me of this : http://www.ftrain.com/google_takes_all.html

  4. Misanthropyst Avatar
    Misanthropyst

    Alvin Toffler identified this trend decades ago, and documents it in (among other works) “Power Shift.” De-massification, niche marketing/interests, etc. Fun to see it all working out as he predicted. Not bad for a former autoworker from Detroit…

  5. Steel Magnolia Avatar
    Steel Magnolia

    Increasing loads of information — and kinds of information — result in a concommitant need for information sifters. Though rarely noted as such, blogs serve that function in regard to the sheer quantity of available “news.” The bigger (or more comprehensive) google gets, the more recourse to additional sifting its users will require.
    For example, when I am looking for commentary on or essays by, say, a particular author, I’d like to be able to skim off the 500 sites which sell his latest book. I’ve noticed, with increasing frequency, the preponderance of commercial sites appearing at the beginning of results pages. I would welcome (and pay for!) the abilitiy to distinguish between sales and content oriented sites.
    Marketplace decentralization, as I think I understand it here, seems to be occuring in concert with a parallel and opposite trend that the Walmarts and the Home Depots of the world represent, no?

  6. Clay Felkair Avatar
    Clay Felkair

    Hey Jeff:
    We’re having a party for the NYC media elite. What we’re gonna do is have everybody get naked, cover their heads with burlap bags (in appropriate Spring colors, of course) and do fun stuff like build naked pyramids, etc.
    Hope to see plenty of NYC bloggers! (No fatties, please.) We’re trying to get Tina Brown to dress up in a military uniform with a cigarette in her mouth and do a lot of pointing.

  7. david Avatar
    david

    Interesting comment on how employers could find job candidates with this distributed approach. This would cause a real shift in the existing structure and I can’t see any reason for it not happening.