The rumour mill has it that Google is about to enter the fray with a classified listings product. The listings model, as popularised by Craigslist has been a persistent thorn in the side of both newspaper groups and eBay, which has of late been aggressively acquiring stakes in free classified players.

As any good librarian knows, classification is a hell of a tough job. Clay Shirky puts it well - you have to be part mind reader, part fortune teller. No matter how clever a taxonomy of subjects you come up with, second guessing search behaviour let alone the future development of new topic areas makes the job near impossible. Dewey had it easy.

As the old saying goes, people pretend to work, when employers pretend to pay them. The good news is that structural changes in the recruitment industry are making it easier for candidates to find themselves a better job. But with the space becoming increasingly crowded with managed service providers, online job boards, social networking sites as well as the traditional band of recruitment industry suspects – the real question may be who really gets to make the money, and who has to just act like they do.

eBay have been on a shopping spree lately. On the list - Shopping.com for US$620m and two free classifieds sites (Gumtree and Loquo) bought for an undisclosed amount.

Here is an irony for you. There is a growing number of people who consume their news and information exclusively through aggregated headline readers, made possible by the magic of RSS feeds. If you are reading this in your mail client, you are clearly not one of them. Your reluctance is entirely reasonable. After all, push content is nothing new and for the most part, nothing spectacular. In the late nineties, Microsoft experimented with web channel subscriptions in Internet Explorer. And then there was push pioneer Pointcast, who we all remember for the $450 million deal that they didn't do. However this time round, the buzz around syndication has a different flavour and not one that may be as pleasant tasting to the media status quo.