eBay opens US Kijiji Classifieds Site

[mandy]

US site opened 29 June, available in 220 cities, all 50 states: http://www.kijiji.com/

2 related articles:

Craigslist, the pioneering online classified Web site, is facing a large new competitor, one that has accumulated insider knowledge of Craigslist's business.

On Friday, eBay's online classified service, Kijiji, made its U.S. debut...

The auctioneer is up against an Internet icon in the privately held Craigslist...

But eBay enjoys an unusual advantage. For three years, executives at eBay have been allowed to peer deep into Craigslist's operations...

full article: http://news.com.com/2100-1024_3-6194872.html?part=rss&tag=2547-1_3-0-20&subj=news

Auction giant eBay has launched an online classifieds service that will compete with market pioneer, Craigslist...

"We're targeting young people and young families looking for bargains locally," Durzy said. "For now it's a free service and our focus is on building the user experience."...

full article: http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9739537...l?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

[sneakymagenta]

Will Kijiji have ho listings like Craigslist? :twistedevil:

[BellisimaJ.]

[quote author=sneakymagenta link=topic=12978.msg59923#msg59923 date=1183665978]
Will Kijiji have ho listings like Craigslist? :twistedevil:
[/quote]

[mandy]

eBay is also bringing its European Gumtree classifieds to the US:

Kijiji has a hard to pronounce/spell name, an uninviting splash page, and a month later major metros like New York and San Francisco (confusingly labeled as "Bay Area") have just a handful of listings. But today, eBay is bringing another of its popular international classifieds sites to the US.

Gumtree is the most popular classifieds site in England, and is popular in other European countries and Australia, serving 500,000 new ads every month. eBay today rolled Gumtree out to three US cities, Boston, New York, and Chicago, where it plans to initially market the service to British and Australian ex-pats...

full article: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/eba...gslist.php

more:

Now eBay’s strategy may be coming into focus: go around Craigslist by expanding all its overseas classified ad sites into the United States, focused on specific demographic and ethnographic communities instead of a broad audience...

Mr. Mallabo said the company is also exploring bringing other international classified brands to the United States, including Loquo, which is popular in Spanish countries.

full article: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/13...raigslist/

[mandy]

Another review of Kijiji:

One thing I found in my experience in selling large items using Kijiji is that once you make that initial contact with a prospective buyer, you need to be proactive and open up a direct and engaging dialog to move your potential customer from interest to sale. In contrast, on eBay selling is pretty straightforward. When a successful listing ends, sellers then invoice the winning buyer, wait for the payment and ship the item. On Kijiji and other classified sites, the sale is a bit more time consuming as you may find yourself going back and forth in e-mail with the probable buyer to provide more information, haggle over the price and schedule pick-up or viewing times.

It's important for eBayers to remember that on Kijiji there is no contractual agreement if someone sends you an offer. Using Kijiji also means that buyers and sellers do not have any protection or any means to conduct the transaction online through the site. Kijiji is just the venue that allows others to find what you are selling — you simply post your classified ad and interested buyers contact you by e-mail directly from the listing page itself. Everything that is required to complete a transaction is up to you to manage off-site...

full article:
http://www.ecommerce-guide.com/essential...hp/3720581




EDIT: eBay seems to be advertising the site through AdWords - there's a large Kijiji banner ad at the top of this page.

[mandy]

A related article: eBay is #1 in classifieds worldwide

Question: What's the biggest classified ad outfit in the online world? Craigslist? Google?

Answer: eBay.

EBay (EBAY) is sweeping past rivals in offering online classified services to users worldwide, a little-publicized fact about the online auction king.

"Within six months of entering the market for online classifieds (three years ago), we blew past all of them," said Jacob Aqraou, the general manager of the classifieds unit...

full article: http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/arti...278363.htm