Recently eBay brought its Craiglist clone Kijiji to the US. But the company also owns the UK-based Gumtree classifieds marketplace. Now that’s in three US cities too (Boston, Chicago, NY). I was told of the latter by a journalist this afternoon. This may be a version of the “spaghetti strategy” for eBay: throw some stuff on the refrigerator and see what sticks.
They may be letting the teams of both “companies” slug it out for traction in the US market and then “pick” a winner. Or perhaps Gumtree was always on course to launch in the US and this is merely the fulfillment of that long-held ambition. It’s not clear.
But overall the strategy (or lack thereof) is somewhat confusing to me …
Screenwerk 
August 28, 2007 at 7:32 pm
Interesting idea. Why not rather post on classified ad sites. For example http://webcosmo.com has free postings in all categories in 39 countries. webcosmo.com is a Google selected model site on ad creation marketplace.