Enter Muutu…

Rob Chartier — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 20:00:49 GMT

Have you seen Muutu yet? Its not just another classifieds search engine, but THE classified aggregator and search engine.

At first look at the search results you will soon notice that they actually aggregate across the multiple sources available. One thing I hate doing is having to scavenge the top 5 local classifieds sites to find what I want. Muutu aggregates and organizes it all for me.

Immediately you might just scoff it off. Others have tried to compete with Craigslist and failed, this is just another. Muutu and Craigslist are not competitors, they are complimentary. People should continue to post to sites like Craigslist but the intelligent seeker should switch to Muutu.

IMHO, Craigslist is making a typical Microsoft mistake (Windows Mobile, IE, etc..). They gain market dominance and then just sit on their hands. They have stopped innovating. Muutu is that next step in the Classifieds market that needs to be taken.

You can mark each item as “Good deal”, “Bad deal”, “Sold”, or “Fraud”. As this engine gains popularity I can see those features becoming more important. They indicate “Distance”, but I’m pretty skeptical if it actually works correctly. Automatically links in Google maps, and the original ad. Everything that a shopper need at your fingertips.

The feedback that I have for the Muutu team is as follows…

1. Include spell checking on the search results. That is, if there is a spelling mistake:

a. and the search yields no results, cross sell the new search criteria immediately

b. and the search yields results, show the results, and Ajax the correct spelling cross sell search.

2. Images are very important

When making a purchase I base much of my decision on the actual product and its condition. The smart consumer is very aware of this and uses photos to help with the decision.

Muutu will need to improve their image detection process. They will also need to be able to facilitate a quick preview of the images, without opening the “Original ad”, and finally their search engine should include a checkbox to limit to ads with just images.

3. Go Mobile!

Lets see a Windows Mobile (or iPhone) based application to intelligently dig into the data.

4. More regions (You do support Vancouver, so I’m happy, but what about the others?)

5. More sources, more sources, more sources!

6. Being able to compare like products, prices and trending data would be a big plus.

Lastly, being a .NET guy myself, I love the fact that this entire technology is based on Microsoft’s ASP.NET.

Vacation : Greece

Rob Chartier — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 19:10:00 GMT

Katerina and I are leaving for the aiport in 1/2 hour to board the plan at 4pm today. We will be landing in Athens around 12pm their time, then its to the car rental and drive another 5 hours to Kat's Dad's village. If you head due west from Athens about 5 hours you eventually will hit the sea. The village is about a stone's throw away from there.

I dont ever recall taking a 3 week vacation before so this break will be a nice one. Time to get caught up on my reading and maybe pick up a little bit of the language (I hope!).

I will try to find an internet cafe in the village, if there is such a thing, and post up some pictures to our family photo site. http://www.chartier-family.com

Rob Chartier ~ Contemplation... : Life

Enter Muutu…

Vacation : Greece