Disintermediation and decentralization of jobs
Posted by matt on 30 Aug 2006 | Tagged as: Newspapers, advertising, media, blogs, rss, opensource, REST, opml, api, mikearrington, techcrunch, crunchnotes, edgeio, freecruiter, classyfeeds, openjobdirectory, grazr, tribune, jamescorbett, eirepreneur, riverofjobs, careerbuilder
I’m a strong believer in the disintermediation of classified ads, which is partially why I chose the name of this blog.
In fact, I heralded Edgeio as a sign of what was to come, especially to the CareerBuilder people I work with.
So, like James Corbett, I was confused by Mike Arrington’s wording of “decentralised job board for tech” , as you can see by my comment on the CrunchNotes post.
Here is the way decentralization for job sites must work.
1. Companies make RSS feeds of their sites available.
2. A decentralized but comprehensive OPML directory of jobs is wrought.
3. The directory is available under an open license.
That’s really all there is to it. And there will still be plenty of ways for service providers to make money.
Now if I were Mike Arrington, I’d continue the lucrative site he’s got. I think that’s great.
In fact, there is nothing wrong with adding those feeds to the Open Job Directory as well. (OPML heads can go to the directory , but it’s all OPML 2.0 inclusion, so you better Grazr it.)
Since the majority of jobs in the Open Job Directory are from paid listing sites, it looks like just another aggregator. But that’s not true. It includes feeds from O’Reilly, Edelman and even Edgeio (OPML) .
And once a critical mass of Businesses are publishing their job feeds, it’ll make those paid-listing sites irrelevant.
