Desktop sharing startup CrossLoop opens its help marketplace

CrossLoop, a company that allows two people to share their computer desktops, has launched an online marketplace where you can find experts to help you with a wide range of (mostly computer-related) topics.

We’ve already written about how CrossLoop is really useful for giving tutorials, since a teacher can not only look over a student’s shoulder, but also interact with their computer desktop. There are a lot of web conferencing tools out there (even free ones, like Dimdim), but CrossLoop focuses on teaching, not business meetings. You can see that focus in some of its features — it doesn’t bother with the usual conferencing features like a whiteboard — and you can also see it in the Monterey, Calif. startup’s recent moves. At first, CrossLoop just provided the sharing technology. But at the end of last year, it started allowing “helpers” to create profiles, so you could find out more about someone before giving them access to your computer. There are now more than 5,000 helpers on CrossLoop who have held more than 1.5 million help sessions, says co-founder Mrinal Desai.

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The help marketplace, where you can search for and compare different tutors, is a logical next step. It also answers the question we’ve been asking: How is the company going to make money? Desai envisions the marketplace as a kind of eBay for tutorials and tech support — with CrossLoop taking its cut of the money made, of course. Not only can users search for a helper and look at their profile (see screenshot below), they can also rate their tutor after the session, and other users can make decisions based on a tutor’s reputation.

Even though the marketplace is at the heart of CrossLoop’s business plan, it’s entirely free for now, Desai says. The goal is to continue building a user base, then eventually start charging a fee for each deal. Desai says the marketplace should be a place where users can find both big tech support companies like Best Buy’s Geek Squad and small “mom and pop” operations, which are little more than a single person giving advice in his or her spare time. There are plenty of other tech support sites, like Support.com, and even support marketplaces like SupportSpace, but CrossLoop’s sharing technology should be a big draw.

In fact, the basic version of CrossLoop’s technology will remain free. Desai says it’s fine if some — or even most — tutors just use the technology to do business outside of the marketplace. Even if that deprives the startup of some revenue, it also leads to greater CrossLoop adoption, and will eventually draw more paying customers.