Now, everyone's your competition

And you thought you had problems before with citizen journalists and placebloggers eating on your one flank and Craigslist eating on your other.

Now along comes Zlio, a site based in France that lets anyone quickly set up their own shopping Web site.

The company has just released its U.S. version, and Frank Gruber has a review. As he describes it, Zlio has a big catalog of products, and you pick the ones you want to feature on your site. Someone buys one by clicking from your site and you get a cut of the dough, but don't have to hassle the shipping, etc.

Talk about viral marketing.

So when newspapers are surrounded by hundreds or thousands of these kinds of sites, how do they stand out from the clutter and provide true value to their advertisers? Heck, why couldn't the advertiser set up a Zlio site to just augment its own product line?

Questions to ponder ...