adrianc

Have a look at https://pinad.com.au - it might be the big improvement you speak about. It has structure and specialization for each of 81 categories currently available.

I described a bit more in a reply to the main thread (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4824233)

Disclaimer: I'm the creator of pinad.com.au

Probably the vertical approach started from a need to have better search and be able to describe a certain type of object/activity. Think about it for a minute: to be able to search you have to be able to describe what you want. To be able to match a description you need to have a structure in place (e.g. the attributes of a car is a structure).

Sites like Craigslist offer a GENERIC way to DESCRIBE MANY objects/activities therefore they offer a GENERIC way to SEARCH for many objects/activities. Sites like AirBnB offer a SPECIALIZED way to DESCRIBE ONE TYPE of object/activity and they have a SPECIALIZED way to SEARCH for that one object/activity.

What if we have a SPECIALIZED way to DESCRIBE MANY activities/objects and a SPECIALIZED way to SEARCH for MANY activities/objects?

That's what I'm trying to do at https://pinad.com.au. Currently I have 81 structured categories and hundreds of attributes and options. All of them allow a specialized description and a specialized search. Would this be a better alternative for a centralized marketplace?

"Ask HN: Review my startup - pinad.com.au"

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4614632

Made this as a self-study on how to use metadata to describe objects in dynamic way - general classifieds are a good area for such a study. I'm currently working on a new UI, more user friendly I hope. Never had any feedback on HN.

A while ago I launched https://pinad.com.au and I'm looking for feedback and comments.

It's a general classifieds tool, but before dismissing it, please give it a chance. I know it's a boring area, but I've also seen a lot of complains on HN about massive players in this field not providing 1/10 of the features I provide. You may experiment these features here (use the left-menu options and see the content of Category & characteristics section):

https://pinad.com.au/search

https://pinad.com.au/items/new

I'm interested to understand how easy/hard is for somebody to use it (from a flow perspective) and also what do you think about the UI. Would you use such a tool to post your own listings or search for listings?

You may see existing listings here: https://pinad.com.au/browse . No account is required to browse or post new entries.

Thanks, I appreciate your time. Adrian