the aggregator model

Filed in archive Entrepreneurship on April 7, 2005

It seems the aggregator model is catching on. Shopper.com was one of the first comparison shopping engines. Along came many such sites in consumer areas comparing flights and product prices mixed up with user reviews.

But there is a new offspring heavily funded pure aggregator models that use content from other sites collected through Agents in order to give you an even better immediate overview even if sites have no API. Mobissimo and Kayak are nicely funded with well over $5 million. Although their business does not require too much besides maintaining these agents and looking for new sources for content.

Another 'Meta Aggregator' is now crawling through all the job boards and showing the content in one smooth layout. Jobs are a much worse material to work with as there is no clear comparison. You might thing of another area that needs an aggregator - yes right online classifieds.

Aptly named Oodle is the new baby by former Excite team members. Oodle is searching mostly Craiglist as of now and in only in selected cities. But no doubt if it catches on and makes sure it can sort the news into relevant categories it can grow to a major player...