Listings Marketplace Edgeio Shuts Down
Edgeio, the online listings marketplace has shuttered its doors, Techcrunch reports.
The company, which aggregated and syndicated classifieds listings (including real estate), burned through a $5 million investment and never was fully able to capitalize on its ideas.
4realz asks the important question however, “What happens to Adaptive Real Estate Services?”
Edgeio launched a real estate push last year with an acquisition of ARES (see Edgeio to Take on Trulia and Realtor.com) a company that had built a database of approximately 1.5 million homes for sale, largely by aggregating MLS data feeds. At the time, I wrote:
This acquisition instantly springboards Edgeio into a position to challenge Trulia.com and Realtor.com.
In retrospect, that statement seems a tad exaggerated, as it’s now apparent that Edgeio’s real estate play never materialized.
That said, I suspect ARES’ assets will still be of value to someone and may be liquidated as part of the folding.
On a personal note, last summer I had the chance to have dinner with Keith Teare, Edgeio’s CEO, ahead of Real Estate Connect in San Francisco. He was the quintessential English gentleman and I wish him and all the other Edgeio folks well in their next ventures.
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Kevin M | Dec 7, 2007 | Reply
Edgeio was a great site but it seems a bit excessive to spend $5 million on a site that is a essentially a database of information scraped from other sites.
Andrew | Dec 7, 2007 | Reply
Edgeio didn’t have a chance. I said this from the start. From experience, I knew the classified market was a tough nut to crack. It is extremely hard to get traction in the classified marketplace. But this is only one reason why they failed. The biggest reason why they failed was that they spent too much time creating features. There is no point in spending time/money creating features and slick UI if you do not have traction (lots of users). You need to let the users determine what features are needed - not the other way around. They other way around will kill you every time.
Pensacola Real Estate News | Dec 7, 2007 | Reply
Too bad. That is one less web site I can claim to post listings to in my listing presentation. It will be interesting to see who’s next.
Sol | Dec 7, 2007 | Reply
Listing sites are like a newspaper classifieds. The more newspapers in the area the harder it will be to find all the listings quickly which leads to why consumers use agents. As fsbo sites and magazines increase more people will call agents for help.
Which leads us back to the MLS.
I believe sites like Zillow, Trulia, Edgeio and other post-it sites simply add layers/cost to the marketing process.
They’re not saving agents time and they’re not saving consumers money. What are they good for?
Norvell Rose | Dec 7, 2007 | Reply
Not the last to fall by the wayside, as the listings data sites struggle for attention and battle for position. Fragmented and fractured, the online experience for consumers will undoubtedly produce collapse, then consolidation, on our merry way to a national MLS with one or two dominant sites emerging. Then, there are the experiential sites where professional video - presented in an engaging, interactive environment - will draw and motivate consumers and agents wanting more than data.
Norvell Rose
Founder, CEO
http://www.RexNet.tv
jdahleen | Dec 7, 2007 | Reply
Bummer - The concept was strong.
Sean | Dec 8, 2007 | Reply
I spoke to the folks at ARES and they said that they had split out and will continue on.
Sean
Erik Hersman | Dec 8, 2007 | Reply
Too bad, I like both Edgeio and Keith. It was a strong concept - maybe before its time? The idea of decentralized management of classifieds is a great idea, and I think we’ll see this come back, maybe as part of another company, with enough money/mass to pull it off.
Fizber | Dec 10, 2007 | Reply
It’s a bad news but maybe we have too much web 2.0 in todays world? I’ve found an awesome video on YouTube about the development of all that co-called social projects - http://youtube.com/watch?v=fi4fzvQ6I-o
retrove.com | Dec 10, 2007 | Reply
I agree with Joel, I too meet Keith at Connect, very nice and well spoken. It appears that they will auction off edegio assets. Here is the financial statement directly from the site. I think it’s a good excercise to review the statistics, which is made public.
http://wiki.edgeio.com/display/ExternalWiki/Home#Home-TrafficNumbers
I’m sure someone will pick this up soon when you look at the indexed pages and links on yahoo site explorer: http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/advsearch?p=http://www.edgeio.com&bwm=i&bwmo=d&bwmf=s
Who will it be?
John Hughen | Dec 11, 2007 | Reply
Well if most listings are closing down online, then I ought to shift to other alternatives… like well… the listing should still be uploaded on the Internet, but the clients and brokers interact through SMS. With so much listings competitions online at a very high cost, this is the next big thing. Find out more at cellmyhouse.org
Sol | Dec 12, 2007 | Reply
Retrove, thanks for posting the link.
$12K monthly revenue
$35K monthly in hosting and bandwidth
Corporate salary is undisclosed.
We can all learn from this chapter.