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.

2 Comments

• Ashish Anand said Saturday, September 19, 2009 11:39:07 PM

  Hi Rob: Thanks for your review of Muutu! We're committed to making Muutu the best way to find and manage classified ads. That's more than a motto, it's a mission. Without giving away our product roadmap, you pretty much covered some of the exciting enhancements we are working on. We'll soon have image indicators for each ad, many more sources (we're already doing 7-10/city), a mobile edition and many more cities. We're very excited with where we are and are getting some great feedback (yours included). Thanks again for your kind (and candid) review! Ashish Anand Founder/CEO Muutu Inc.

• Eric said Sunday, September 20, 2009 3:42:14 PM

  This is cool, but it still lacks what I need the most which is email notifications. Check out www.CLGenie.com if you want to be notified in near real time when a new item is posted that matches your search. My apartment would not be as well furnished without CLGenie!