10/9/07

Choosing A Digital Marketplace: Is It Zipidee?


The New York Times is reporting today on Red Herring's story of the upcoming debut of Zipidee -- a type of E-Bay site which will let folk sell ebooks, software, games, and the like through its marketplace.

The NYT comments thus far are interesting: David Mitchell writes that Tradebit.com has been doing this for years already, and Kram urges content creators to sell from their own sites, avoiding these marketplace hubs.

Meanwhile, it's Nick Gonzalez at TechCrunch that gives the real skinny on Zipidee: he compares more than just Tradebit.com -- he brings in Payloadz, e-Junkie, Lulu, Edgeio, and eBay. He also discusses horizontal versus vertical, pointing to DocStoc, Scribd, AmieStreet, 5Min, and Snocap.

Gonzales does address several items that distinguish Zipidee from the rest of the pack: more control over pricing; the ability to create your own little virtual store (akin to E-Bay); etc. An important feature: Zipidee will offer its own proprietary DRM protection function.

Meanwhile, over at the Wall Street Journal -- they just like the name.