That question came to me this morning, in response to RedBeacon being named the winner of this year’s TechCrunch 50.
What RedBeacon offers is a form of what in the VRM community we call a personal RFP. As the company’s site says, RedBeacon provides a way to …
- 1
Request a local service - 2
Compare prices
from qualified providers - 3
Schedule the job online
(Whoa. I didn’t know WordPress would let you copy and paste images and text together like that. Nice. An old dog learns a new trick.)
As it says here, you can request a service, review qualified buyers, select a provider, and schedule the job, all at the RedBeacon site.
Is that VRM? In a number of ways, yes. RedBeacon to me looks like a fourth party service, such as those outlined in VRM and the Four Party System.
I would like to see how it fits as what Joe Andrieu outlines as a user-driven service. What do the rest of ya’ll think?