Mpire Ups Ante with New Shopping Service

UPDATED: The former president of Expedia thinks he’s found another high growth opportunity.

Matt Hulett, CEO of Mpire.com, said the new Internet shopping service, which launches today, will bring together listings from eBay, Yahoo, Overstock, and Craigslist. Users will be able to filter results by price, time left to make a purchase, marketplace, geographic location, and vendor.

Mpire, backed by Ignition Partners and a crucial partnership with eBay,  employs a total of sixteen former Microsoft  executives. The service will make its money by selling priority listing in its search results and through affiliations with highlighted marketplaces.

But does the world need another shopping search engine?

Hulett, of course, has no doubt the answer is yes.

“Consumers don’t know what to pay for things,” he told internetnews.com. “There are too many sites and too many choices.

“We provide analytics: the true market value, the average sale price for the last 30 days, and a historical pricing trend. That’s the core of what we’re doing different.”

Gartner Analyst Allen Weiner told internetnews.com he thinks it’s a great idea.

“Absolutely. Consumers want to have as much information as possible to make informed decisions. This brings all those dimensions together. That’s something that’s been lacking,” Weiner said.

Mpire will generate the analytics using data eBay agreed to share.

“The last entity we had to convince that this had legs and we could turn it into a successful business was eBay,” Cotter said. “Surprisingly, it didn’t take that long.

“The people we’ve talked to, the relationships we have in place, I think people are going to be blown away when they see what we’re doing.”

Updates prior version to correct spelling of Matt Hulett, CEO of Mpire.