eBay Localizes Online Classifieds for U.S. Market
In March of 2005, eBay launched Kijiji. It was a primarily international effort to host local online classified advertisements. Over the course of the next few years, a series of mergers expanded the localized online communities to cover most of the world. This name evidently has a lot of brand recognition outside of the United States, where Craigslist tends to be the internet resource for local internet transactions.
eBay owns a minority stake in craigslist and has been involved in litigation with them over whether this venture is fair play. eBay sued first, arguing that their economic advantage was “unfairly diluted.” Craigslist countersued, arguing that eBay has unfairly competed and misappriorated proprietary information for Kijiji.
Perhaps in an effort to move past this, or maybe just appropriate branding, eBay is launching eBay classifieds in select cities in the United States. Some of their pitch seems to be directly related to how the service is superior to Craigslist, whose link-heavy, minimalist design has remained largely unchanged since the days of dial-up internet.
“All those links you see on some sites? You won’t encounter that clutter here.” Other advantages include being able to view seller history, hit tracking, “rapid response times” for customer support, and faster posting of ads.
Another notable difference is the moderation. What’s promised is a family-friendly experience. Craigslist, on the other hand, is consensus-moderated and has easily accessible adult sections for the raunchiest of merchandise. In many cases, functional prostitution occurs in their personal section. Personals were scrapped from the design of Kijiji, which again, will now be launched in the United States as eBay Classifieds.
One reason for Craigslist’s success has been their pricing. For the most part, Craigslist is free. There are only a few services in select cities that generate revenue for the San Francisco Bay Area corporation, specifically paid job ads in San Francisco, New York City, San Diego, Boston, Seattle, Chicago, Philadelphia, Portland, and Washington D.C. Also, brokers sponsoring apartment listings in New York City are required to pay $10. eBay Classifieds promises to be 100% free, and offers many of the same services that craigslist has–including housing for sale and rent, carpool listings, information for artists and musicians, lost & found listings, and more. In fact, only the rants & raves section (an explicit gallery of internet crackpottery) and the adult sections (including personals) are absent from the site, found at ebayclassifieds.com. Other advantages include the expanded pets section (including livestock and animal services) and legal advice.
According to Alexa.com at press time, Craigslist.org is the 6th most visited sites in the United States, immediately followed by Amazon and eBay. It’s no wonder that eBay is encroaching on the classifieds territory, as there’s plenty of money to go around. I spent the day browsing for housing on the classified site; yesterday, there were around 15-16 housing ads for the Dallas/Fort Worth area. Although that number is certainly dwarfed by the number available on Craigslist, eBay’s brightly-lit aesthetic lends itself well to promotion. Additionally, the clearly-defined fields for things like square footage and whether pets allowed will likely make searching for things more effective if the idea takes off.
Saul Hansell of the Bits (Business, Innovation, Technology, Society) section of the New York Times Online points out that eBay has an ”uphill battle”but has the advantage of a higher budget and more dedicated staff. Hansell points out the cleanliness of the interface as a potential advantage.
Stay tuned.
Email
Leave a Comment