The big “news” in the classifieds space has been about Craigslist and the site coming under pressure to make changes in its erotic services ads. But there’s a bunch of other stuff going on. . .
eBay owned Kijiji (whose growth has stalled somewhat) is reportedly considering a name change to “eBay Classifieds.” (Recall that eBay owns a significant minority stake in Craigslist and the two companies are in litigation. I’m unaware of its status.) In the meantime, Kijiji has been busy adding features, including Twitter and Facebook integration (@KijijiUS). Not long ago the site also added a bunch of new functionality:
- Category icons
- Watch Ad function
- Résumés Category
- Swap/Trade Category
- Foreclosure & REOs section in Housing Category
- Enhanced Ad Reporting
New York-based classifieds purveyor, OLX, which operates in the US but has greater strength in non-US markets, raised more money $18 million over two recent rounds, for a total of roughly $29 million in VC funding to date.
Earlier this month MySpace launched classifieds in Canada, powered by Oodle:
Even with all the negative publicity, the primitive functionality and the competition from a number of powerful companies, Craigslist continues to dominate the segment and has arguably been one of the biggest beneficiaries of the recession. (Don’t take the traffic data comparing CL, Kijiji and OLX below as actual, but rather directional.)
Source: Compete (CL is the blue line)
Screenwerk 
May 16, 2009 at 6:43 pm
The name “Kijiji” kills me every time I see it. It would be funny to see it’s traffic take off if/when they change it’s name (and domain!).
I’m actually a bit embarrassed to tell my friends/family to go to a site called “Kijiji”…they’ll think I’m loopy. 😀
May 16, 2009 at 7:51 pm
There’s a rationale behind the name. Apparently kijiji is a Swahili word meaning “village.”
May 16, 2009 at 10:25 pm
The Kijiji brand is a great stand alone brand. Has a nice ring to it, easy to remember. Kijiji does a better job competing outside the US as I believe part of their strategy was to grow it outside the US first, due to non-compete agreements with CL. CL now just has so much traction in the US its hard to compete against.
Rebranding as Ebay Classifieds makes for a rather dull name but would allow for better integration into Ebay as a whole. It would certainly increase exposure to the classifieds but may come at an expense to Ebay proper where sellers pay to list their items.
Ebay has got themselves caught between a rock and a hard place it seems.
May 17, 2009 at 1:20 pm
The eBay brand is in the same position that AOL was in some respects. That position led AOL to maintain separate brands for some of its properties.
September 18, 2009 at 3:45 pm
You might want keep an eye on up-and-coming local classified ads site:
http://www.IHaveABlankForSale.com
September 18, 2009 at 3:55 pm
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