March 1st, 2006
Postcards from the Edgeio
I went to check out Edgeio, and the first thing that jumped out at me is what may be the dumbest tagline ever — “Listings from the edge” — this immediately made me think of Postcards from the Edge, the autobiographical novel by actress Carrie Fisher, which was made into an all-star film.
My next thought was — this is a service that is openly hostile to non-geeks — it’s name, it’s tagline. Forget the tiny awareness statistics for RSS. What percentage of the US online population is familiar with the Web 2.0 concept of the “edge”? Less than 0.001%?
And this is how it’s being branded? This has to be a case study in how to brand your technology product in a way that ensures mainstream users will not adopt it.
I won’t repeat my previous critique of Edgeio, but let me just dig into the following explanation on Edgeio for how to publish listings:
edgeio constantly monitors RSS enabled websites - today we are monitoring more than 25 million sites! Any item tagged “listing” and included in an RSS feed will be published on the edgeio website and through the edgeio network.
So I’m an Ebay power seller (or user of Craigslist) who comes to check out Edgeio, and my first question is, uh, “what’s RSS”?
I nominate Edgeio as the poster child for Web 2.0’s utter failure to understand and design applications for AVERAGE PEOPLE.
Branding professionals are having their own difficult rendezvous with the new media world (in which everyone has equal access to the tools of branding), but unlike your average Ajax developer, at least they have a clue about pop cultural reference points and how to connect with consumers.
Powered by 
Design by 
In their defence, they have a plan which is to get geeks involved first, then expand to the general populace. Not sure how that would affect the tagline or description– but it’s not a bad way to get started for the simple reason that a site like this will die if it doesn’t have listings when people go there. By tapping into geeks first, they can ensure that 6 months from now, when they start marketing to mainstream users, there will actually be stuff up there.
I wonder what your reaction are to their competitor, blogbuy? blogbuy
Ted, I think tapping into geeks first is a great strategy, but if your ultimate goal is mainstream success then it makes no sense to brand the geek appeal. Of course, if your goal is to flip…
new Geeks for Non-Geeks movement got me thinking about the evolving definition of a “geek.†The following is just a first draft, […] read more Postcards from the Edgeio I went to check out Edgeio, and the first thing that jumped out at me is what may be the dumbest tagline ever â€â€
Of course you need to start with the geeks first. This is technology for geeks. So was Skype. So was ICQ. So was the whole damn Internet. It’s just a tagline, easy to change when (and if) RSS ever goes anywhere.
Mainstream adoption will come when someone buys them and inserts edgeio into a product that makes it invisible to the masses. None of this will matter.
I agree though, that it is a stupid tagline. But really, what difference does a tagline make. You’d think ‘just for the taste of it’, or ‘like a rock’ sounded stupid too if you hadn’t heard it a kerbillion times.
My .02