I’ve been watching three new web 2.0 classifieds sites – BlockRocker, rbloc and theadcloud. And for those of you who say I focus on silicon valley companies, I have a surprise for you – all three of these companies are located outside of the U.S. BlockRocker is in Winnipeg, rbloc is in Calgary and theadcloud is in Chile.
None of these are in any position to kill of Craigslist any time soon, but all three have interesting features and contribute to the overall discussion of what a classified ad site should be all about. I wish I could add Microsoft’s Fremont project to this post as well, but I do not yet have a green light to write about them.
Here are the details on each:
BlockRocker
BlockRocker, which is a one man show created by Rod Edwards in Winnipeg, is focused on geography.
The site has integrated Google maps in a way that reminds me of Trulia (for real estate search).
BlockRocker launched on December 1, 2005 and is still working out some bugs. The site allows publisher tagging of classifieds and has RSS feeds for all searches. Listings are free.
rbloc
rbloc, which is also based in Canada, hasn’t really launched yet (there are no listings). But the functionality is there and I like aspects of it. rbloc is completely focused on local (the name is a play on “our block”, as in our street).
It supports both set price and auctions for ads, as well as “wanted”. The idea is to create more of a marketplace around similar stuff. Also, they have a paid ads area to the left of listings. Actual ad listings are free.
Some actual content would be nice, of course. But I’m always patient with new services, unlike all of you people. :-)
theadcloud
Chile-based theadcloud is the youngest of these very young services, but already seems to have the most legs. Everything is tags, tags, tags – no taxonomies here. Listings are free, and you can submit to as many cities as you like (all cities have feeds, as do tag searches within cities).
And they have another feature which I really like – user comments on individual ads. This thing is only days old, but I really like it.