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Gumiyo & Edgeio: Is there a market for mobile classifieds?

Gumiyo lets you post classifieds from your mobile/cell. Edgeio - Michael Arrington’s hyped “edge aggregating” classifieds site started as a blog-listing aggregator, but now appears to be an awkward mix everything-aggregator in the style of Oodle and traditional classified site in the style of Craiglist.

Anyway, a recent press release announced that these two companies are going to be working together. It doesn’t really say how, other than to suggest that Edgeio listings will be browseable on cellphones, and that browsers will be able to contact sellers with text messages or “web-activated telephony” - which I assume is a fancy way of saying “clicking a link to dial a call.”

The question I’d like to ask is: how many people want to search classifieds from their cell phone? What use case does this support? I suppose I could go to a car dealership, find a car that I like, and comparison shop vs. classified listings… that scenario seems to be a reach though. Gumiyo’s tagline is the vague-to-the-point-of-meaningless “connecting buyers and sellers” - the question is, what’s the marginal benefit to connecting them in realtime? eBay and Craigslist have done a good business connecting them asynchronously because that supports observed behaviour - i.e.: people generally like to shop & research from home where all of their resources are at their fingertips, and then go and transact. I don’t imagine Gumiyo/Edgeio’s mobile browsing will enjoy the same level of success.

Gumiyo’s cellular posting, however, is a different story. Posting stuff on ebay or wherever is a PITA - out comes the digicam, take some pictures, dump them to my PC, crop and resize, upload to whatever classifieds site I’m using, etc. Gumiyo - see below - makes this a one step, all mobile process that looks to save a tonne of work (for posting simple items, anyway).