MyThings is a service that allows users to create an online portfolio of valued belongings.
We reviewed iTaggit earlier this week; MyThings operates in the same space. Both provide personal asset management although MyThings is the more extensive offering of the two; MyThings took $8million from Carmel Ventures and Accel Partners in May 2006 and the funding shows.
MyThings offers a integrated one stop shop for collectibles. Items can be included in the database, with tags and pictures. Once listed users are able to obtain a valuation for the item, buy (or extend) the items warranty, purchase insurance, sell the item on eBay and even donate am item to a worthy cause. MyThings also includes an extensive database of items reported lost and stolen from the world of art, antiques and collectibles; MyThings users are able to add stolen items to the database at any time and likewise the service is able to screen new submissions for items that may have been stolen.
The company has offices in Menlo Park, London and Tel Aviv, delivering a global product with a lot of appeal. Perhaps my earlier assessment of the space (in the iTaggit review) as being niche was unwarranted; the extensive user collections listed on MyThings would indicate that listing collections online may actually be a hot vertical.
How will they screen new admissions for being stolen. Will they report their suspicions. If they are wrong could they be sued.
Search Engine Web
good question. I’m not sure if its image or item matching, they acquired the stolen goods part from another company but I will look into it some more
Duncan can’t hardly get out TC addiction!!
Hi Duncan
What I really can’t understand with these startups is – Why the hell do they need that kind of money for doing anything?
It will be really interesting if you could break the amount (as to what they might be using it for) from your next startup stories.
Thanks.
I think they want to take such huge risk. They don’t have oxygen left.
They want to “SELL OUT THEIR SOULS!!” that’s what they want. I think.
Gomzl
good point and if I have the info in future I will include it.
$ 8million webdesign versus PBSkids.org website.
you got to be kidding right?
Don’t tell me….that development and design cost $8million. I think they should visit PBSKids.org webdesign.
use this at a very high risk – u can easily be a mugger’s target. else, make everything private – then again, what’s the point
As a user of MyThings I have checked and I can say that there is no security risk whatsoever. There is no way another user can identify who you are or where you live. Though you register with an email address, other users only ever see your screen name
I’m with the rest that sees no point in this… protection from being stolen seems like a far-fetched argument to desperately differentiate a service that has been done before (web 1.0 had hundreds of niche-specific collection tracking dbs). Estimate value? Get into a discussion with collectors and you will see how hard it is to pin-point values on items. Too subjective.
What percentage of collectors has anything that valuable that is targeted by thieves? And what are the odds of one of those rare collectors stumbling upon that site? 8 mil thrown on the trash… these are the sort of sites that make the bubble go “pop”…
Come on…There is value in getting an expert to value your things for free. I submitted for valuation the watch my husband bought me at a gold market when he was in Dubai on business. We were both really interested in seeing what an expert thought it was worth…we got back not just a monetary number but a whole explanation.
“the extensive user collections listed on MyThings would indicate that listing collections online may actually be a hot vertical”
I’m not sure it’s a hot vertical…a quick check of Compete.com’s web stats show ~3K visitors in May, down substantially from April (launch spike?)
Honestly, I don’t understand the tracking my personal assets space. Looking at their value props:
(1) De-clutter your life by keeping receipts, warranties, and other documents online
- Call me old fashioned but I keep important stuff in one file folder. Occasionally I even scan them and keep them as a PDF.
(2) Track the value of your things by using our online estimator and valuation
- Why? So I keep track of how much I’ve spent and get depressed on how my $5000 HDTV is now worth $1000?
(3) Compile a private inventory of your things for insurance purposes
- I use a video camera – better proof I think
(4) Let MyThings bring you relevant information, services, and accessories
- Why? so you can sell my info to advertisers
I don’t get it…but I must be wrong for some smart folks at Accel and Carmel ventures to pour $8M into the company. Good luck guys.
My score:
+—-+
: 5 :
+—-+
This site is excellent! Call me crazy or call me anal, but I love the idea of having all my stuff organized online so I can keep track of where I bought everything and who to call if I have a problem…without rummaging through a thick file of faded receipts. It only took a few minutes to set up a portfolio with all my home office equipment. I’m here to stay.
Its hard to tell whether something will stick or not in the web world, but, I still don’t get the 8 million financing and the offices worldwide… someone please explain!
Aydin.
jem> nothing is safe – everything’s a risk anyway. with hackers, everything is possible
mythings aside, i can’t wait for emmanuel goldstein and mark abene’s freedom downtime and urchin!
Interesting idea, I may have to check this out, but it seems like there are other options out there similar to this.
Here in the UK they seem to have deals with a number of online retailers for advertising. I have seen them on Tesco and Dixons for quite a while.
From the look of their tag cloud: http://www.myth...s.com/tags.aspx
the most popular items are jewelry, art work, electronics, and antiques of all kinds. This type of service is probably easier to market to gadget geeks, but it is the baby-boomers that have lots of these other items. Not a an easy demographic to interest in online applications, but if made easy enough and marketed thru the right channels (eg. Antique Roadshow), it could work.
$8 million dollars is lot of money.
Research, product development, programming, hosting, and design. That cost $ 8 million dollars website. Geeze, someone needs more schooling in math or accounting or more engineering skills.
$8 million dollars does mean you are going to be successful in 2-50 years.
Everyone knows, If you take huge amount of risk. It makes harder to pay back investors rights, creditors rights, and future debt. I’m saying it’s true.
They should look up under chapter 11 on wikipedia and other securities.
MyThings need to hire harvard, stanford, oxford, highly educated business people.
since when does more money equal more extensive offerings? if you look at the two, itaggit has far more features.
what an exciting new fronteir. wheres the meat and potatoes. i kinda like the name. when is mike gonna put some meat on the table. mylocator.com is the master portfolio of web properties. lets talk about the traffic auction, or business.com. maybe im hanging around in the wrong place. i know there’s something big out there that will take off like a rocket. gotta go im starving.
In answer to all your comments about MyThings’ funding, in fact TechCrunch describes only the consumer part of our application. Our resources are also used to provide valuable public services for law enforcement and the general community, as well as to build commercial partnerships and serve retailers and manufacturers.
We are partnering with international and regional law enforcement agencies to enable consumers, police and second-hand dealers to search and report to a global online database of stolen items. This database already enables the world’s top auction houses and other dealers to prevent the sale of stolen and Nazi-era looted goods, and will help pawnshops and online auctions to prevent the sale of fenced items.
Our top retailer and manufacturer partners are also excited to use the application to offer free added benefits to their customers.
Realizing our vision of becoming the world’s most valuable database of belongings – useful to community, police, auction houses, art collectors and gadget freaks alike – is ambitious but we are well on the way to realizing it. It costs money but we, Accel and Carmel are confident that it will pay off handsomely, both commercially, and in our value to the community.
To celebrate our Techcrunch debut, we launched a new version of our site today (no weekends in Startupland) with a new feature called the MyThings Personality Test. Come try it on http://www.MyThings.com, and find out what kind of “thing” you are.
Yumio – Product Mgr for MyThings
$ 8million webdesign versus PBSkids.org website.
you got to be kidding right?
Don’t tell me….that development and design cost $8million. I think they should visit PBSKids.org webdesign.
FINALLY a service the makes it easier for burglars everywhere to steal your shit!
If this thing ever gets hacked…oh brother…
hey look, another social network :yawn:
seriously, “things”? I know all these new social networks are utterly generic, but this takes the cake.
anonymouse – “Cake” is a thing. Register it on MyThings!
This would seem to be another move toward “Auction Culture” as predicted in the book Futureshop. At my company, Auctioning4u, we are also working towards building personal possessions as a new asset class, enabling items to be resold with ease
I think it is a potentially interesting idea. If they can get enough people to list and then police/pawn shops to check, they might be able to solve a few thefts and reunite people with their stolen property.
Also, it is good to have a record of things offsite in case your house burns down, it falls off a cliff, sinks into an earthquake hole or there is a flood (do you know that in the aftermath of Katrina, a lot of people couldn’t get money from their banks because their cards and ID info was lost in the flood?). As to off-site copies, I think something like 60-70% of average computer users have never taken a backup, let alone organized their information, duplicated it and stored a copy outside their home.
The service also seems to offer free appraisals (as always, you have to be wary when anything is offered free) and the ability to easily sell items you don’t want on eBay. I’d like to see them support Craigslist also.
As to hackers, the only info the service knows you by is your email addr (and that wasn’t even confirmed for me before they let me start adding items). If you are smart, you are using a disposable email addr from someone like spamex. In any case, even using a real email addr, there isn’t any easy way to trace you unless you have foolishly used your real name or published your address. Of course, I would never post my real photo on any social site like this either. One day, photo search will become workable!
Excellent.