By Timothy C. Barman
From The Providence Journal, March 6, 2003
PROVIDENCE -- Oso.com is dead, but one of its key features is alive again. Vega Interactive, a new Providence start-up founded by two former Oso.com producers, has developed a classified advertising Web site called ListItRI.com.
Oso.com was a site developed by Cox Interactive, a sister company of Cox Communications. It offered news and community-oriented content about Rhode Island. But the 4-year-old site shut down last year after Cox Interactive ended its operations.
Linda Woods and [Tom] Viall, both producers at Oso.com, lost their jobs.
They decided to use the knowledge they gained from working at Oso.com to start a new venture.
"One of the great benefits we had," Woods said, "was looking at page logs every day. We have a very keen sense of what was popular at Oso.com."
The most widely viewed feature on that site was the classified listings, she said, accounting for about 25 percent of all page views on the site.
So they formed a small company -- Vega Interactive -- with less than $5,000 of their own money. Its principal product is ListItRI.com, a Web site that lets Rhode Islanders buy and sell merchandise, real estate and cars from each other.
Viall said they still had a number of contacts at Cox and they struck a deal with the company to promote ListItRI.com on the home page of the site viewed by customers of Cox's Internet access service. In return, ListItRI.com features banner advertisements for Cox's products.
Viall said he didn't want to disclose details of the agreement his company has with Cox Communications. ListItRI.com differs from the Oso.com classified feature. The biggest difference is ListItRI.com charges a membership fee for sellers who list merchandise; oso.com did not charge.
Sellers can sign up for a month for $9.95 or for a year at $39.95 and can post an unlimited number of listings while they are members. There are no other transaction fees, such as those charged by eBay, the giant Web auction site. Buyers pay nothing.
The membership fee is how the site makes money. It doesn't accept advertising, except for Cox.
Vega Interactive is taking a risk with its membership-fee business model, Woods said, and added that she wasn't aware of any other site that had taken this route. Most charge listing or transaction fees.
Still, she expressed confidence in the idea.
"The membership fee is so nominal," she said. "We feel the value we deliver is going to make it a success."
