A Marketplace For All Things Digital

There’s Amazon and its copycats for the online retail of physical goods (leaving aside the fact that Amazon is now working the intangible side of the digital retail world as well). Why not erect something similarly multifaceted (in the way that Amazon sells different types of goods and not only books) without involving so much as a cardboard box or a pint of diesel between seller and buyer?

That’s what the folks being Zipidee (I’m not fond of the name, either) - a project slated to launch any day now - are working to deliver.

Like the iTunes Store is to music and video, Sony’s Connect Store is to ebooks, and Steam is to games, Zipidee wants to be everyone’s one-stop shop for things digital. The company intends to provide a marketplace for a continuously growing selection of items of all types, with sellers controlling “the price(s) of their goods and the method by which they will be distributed.”

Initially, however, Zipidee, as it is devoid of major media partnerships and the like from the get go, will focus on the distribution of – wait for it – instructional and educational videos, targeted at the “prosumer.” I think I speak for most everyone aware of this little newsbrief in saying: huh?

Okay, clearly an outfit like Zipidee would realistically have a difficult time “hitting the ground running,” as it were. It couldn’t possibly have hoards of game developers, book publishers, and record and film companies jumping in from day one. Even a reputable behemoth like Amazon.com failed to get two of the four big record companies to sign on to its AmazonMP3 venture. But Zipidee’s problems don’t only reside with its initial lack of a good deal of stuff to sell.

It’s very potential may also be limited. The company has publicly stipulated that it has in fact developed it’s own unique DRM concoction to apply to content, be it a video rental, an outright purchase, or something to keep streaming multimedia from being ripped by an end user. That’s right, and as we all know, DRM is no good today. Furthermore, Zipidee’s developers wish to make available to suppliers the option utilize the paid-for distribution model or one ad-supported. Personally, I don’t see the company juggling those two models well at all.

So, what will content owners interested in delivering their bits through Zipidee be paying this new middleman? A $1 listing fee, as well as 20% of the purchase price, similar to the kind of pay-little-to-play-and-share-a-portion-of the-sale structure in place at eBay.

To be honest, this project could go either way. It could establish a notable presence on the Web, or it could find itself almost completely ignored. Looking at its seemingly slim list of partners (not published, but I think that tells you something), I somehow don’t see it getting to be the big gun its investors – Individuals’ Venture Fund, Novus Ventures, and Khalda Development – are probably hope it becomes.