Brand Utility & Craigslist Apps

We talked last week about the concept of brand utility, about how brands offer services to remain relevant. New applications are already offering such services:

First up is the Craigslist Pic Viewer – a website that lets you see all the pics in the For Sale and Housing Craigslist sections on one page.

Then, there are three new services identified by the NY Times that your brand could have set up to help people use sites like Craigslist:

A new breed of Web sites aims to simplify the process. The sites offer templates and step-by-step instructions for creating classified ads and then post the ads, sometimes free, on all the major listings services.

Two sites that offer this service already are vFlyer and Postlets; a third, Mpire, which plans to charge a small fee for the service, will join the fray soon. The sites rely primarily on outside advertising for their revenue.

Wanted: A Way to Profit by Simplifying Web Classifieds – New York Times