Ether

www.ether.com launched more than a week ago. There wasn’t much to herald it, but it’s seems that this new Web 2.0 gizmo can make some great connections.

A division of Ingenio, Ether enables the sale of services over the Internet by just about anyone, but one would assume that this would be useful to tech people, lawyers, psychologists/counsellors, entertainers, bloggers, and more. “Anyone with something valuable to say can earn money by talking on the phone with their audience,” so sayeth Ether. Ingenio has previously run keen.com, a similar service that has since devolved (?) to adult chats and psychic readings, so some questions are surely being asked about Ether – is it just a rehash?

Some of the usual comments come up about good ideas that fall short of expectations, but one can quite easily view this from another perspective: maybe where these good ideas end up is actually the market that works best for them (some of the services on keen.com are far far away from cheap). A similar service has existed in Germany since 2000 – www.questico.com – and it’s almost wholly focussed on the astrology/clairvoyance domain. An attempt was made to offer financial, technical and medical advice, but nothing came of it.

So, will Ether head the same way? It looks fine on the surface, and folks are understandably excited about the possibilities for certain breeds of professionals. The customer side of it seems a bit hard though – think about this: you want advice (and you usually want it now), but you have to register first and pay upfront. As a seller, you can have a delayed response/callback option which can also be a bit of a turnoff from the other side. Ratings are another issue. Interestingly, there isn’t a pay-per-minute model, as many professionals feel that that doesn’t work very well. However, it’s quick to integrate into a Web site, forum, blog, etc – definitely a plus.

It remains to be seen if Ether can indeed become an e-bay for services.