Interesting entry over on EarlyStageVC discussing Vast (Link). I’ve heard plenty of talk surrounding Vast, but had never taken the time to really grok it. This entry remedies that. Here’s some excerpts:

Vast.com looks like a classic classifieds site, but it is not. It is not a data aggregator. It is a data disseminator. It is a hub targeted to the developer community to enable the mashup of structured data in a reusable form.
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As a result, the data are Vast – millions of cars, millions of jobs, and millions of profiles, with more categories of objects to come.

This is the true long tail of listings. The user benefit is obvious — find the exceptional value. Like the old joke — why is it always that you find something in the last place you look? — the exceptional value is always in the long tail.

Like MyPicklist (about which I posted recently – reLink), I see the spawns of Vast – probably mash-ups that integrate it with social software – greatly empowering those who create truly good product. I hope this provides greater opportunities for designers and raises the bar for the corporate copycats of the world.

In addition, this seems like another factor in the evolution of the ecoToroid as the Long Tail section continues to flatten. I need to make time to animate that thing.