Where's Craig?

Recently I decided to try and attend more techie events so could I stay up to date on what was happening in Silicon Valley while expanding my social circle a bit more.

So, tonight I started my new resolution and went to SDForum's 'Search SIG' event being held at the Google campus in Mountain View. The evening consisted of a 1-1/2 hour panel that included Bindu Reddy - the Product Manager of Google Base, Craig Donato - the founder/CEO of Oodle and Keith Teare - the founder/CEO of Edgeio (and partner of Michael Arrington). All three companies are pushing to change the way classified ads are handled.

As I was sitting there listening to them speak, I kept wondering why someone from Craigslist.org and eBay wasn't there to make this a really well rounded discussion. Both companies were pioneers in this space and while they may choose to do things differently than the three above - I would have thought they should have been there if the discussion is on the market of classified ads.

I don't know, maybe I misunderstood the intent of the discussion. Maybe I am just wired to think the best way to do a panel is to get a diverse group of people together to talk about the needs of the marketplace and work together to solve them - whether as open source applications or as for profit software. Maybe I just need to get out more and take my rose colored glasses off. Who knows.

I at least got to see the Edgeio demo before I made the long drive home and it will be interesting to see how quickly the overall market loves on it. It seems like experienced bloggers will adapt it quickly as they will be used to the format - but it relies on RSS feeds and even though I blog, I am a rookie at best and have yet to set up an RSS feed (but shhhhh - don't tell Chris as he will kick my butt as I SHOULD have done this by now). As for my mom or grandma adopting it, I don't know - they are really comfortable with the likes of Craigslist.org and eBay and I am not sure they have that many wild hairs left to try something that new. Though they could surprise me.

Technorati tags: classifiedsearch craigslist ebay edgeio oodle