Philipp Heintze

http://berlin.loquo.com/

Today a was looking for a tennis strategy book called “winning ugly” on eBay Germany. There was none. What surprised me though was a link called: “Geben Sie eine Suchanzeige auf“. Didnt knew before that eBay is offering search ads for things users are not finding on the platform. This service called WantItNow in the US is another inhouse competitor to kijiji. Strange ways they are going… But imagine what happens if those ads are transferred to kijiji platform…

A huge drop from Vivastreet Paris was the most remarkable event this week concerning numbers - the week kijiji bought loquo and gumtree. With this buyout it more and more heads to a real classified fight between two parties: kijiji the conquerer and craigslist, the champion. Its hard to see that Vivastreet, the only real third player left, has massive problems and lost 18% of its listings in just one week!

So lets have a short resumé of the fight (8 Rounds):
USA = Craiglist // Germany = Opusforum // France = Vivastreet // Spain = loquo (kijiji) // Canada = kijiji // China = kijiji // UK = gumtree (kijiji) // Italy = kijiji

All figures at a glance // All articles at a glance // Explanation of the counting method (German)

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Kijiji, the international classifieds group within eBay, the San Jose, Calif., online-marketplace operator, said it acquired two classified-ad sites, Gumtree.com and LoQUo.com. Terms weren’t disclosed. Gumtree, founded in London, is a local United Kingdom site and also offers multiple city sites in countries including the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. LoQUo.com, founded in Barcelona, is a community-focused classifieds site in Spain and also offers multiple city sites in Spain and other European countries. Kijiji, which means “village” in Swahili, is a group of classifieds-style Websites available in more than 90 cities in Austria, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Switzerland, and Taiwan. EBay shares fell a dime to
$35.28 on Tuesday.

(Yahoo News May 18)

The speed of the kijiji invasion is enormous. Visiting loQUo.com today was quite surprising. Not because of the good development the site is performing (Number 4 in Total Hitlist, and Number 2 in Listings Hitlist!), but because of that small logo in the right corner. Have I missed that before? No, and this is not just a dream either. kijiji is moving at high speed and mother eBay is heading to another worldwide monopoly. Wondered why kijiji was not available in Spanish? Now you now why!

Somehow this is sad. Don’t you think?

On Friday the 13th there is only good-news for kijiji. Its Berlin site is the most succesful one in the world these days! Climbing up the listings-hitlist two ranks is one factor. The other is that huge monthly growth, only beaten by kijiji Taipei (on a much smaller level). The other kijiji cities are doing well also, Rome for example. But whats wrong with craigslist? They really dont seem to care much about internationalization. Strong performance in San Fran, but whats with the rest of the world? Maybe thats a deal with eBay? What they really would need is other language versions, because now I guess only Americans abroad are using the sites. But Craig has other plans anyways.

All figures at a glance // All articles at a glance // Explanation of the counting method (German)

Where can you find every listing from craigslist? And from the Newspapers also? Your right! At oodle, the scrounging classified-site…

Thanks to Aschi from Switzerland. He told me to type www.ricardo.de into my browser. Guess what’s coming?

Funny to see that eBay is not only taking the whole auctions market but the domain names from beaten competitors of the past. This is like taking “scalps”. As you all now ricardo/qxl tried to compete with eBay some years ago. Now they are offline in Germany. Intoko bought the domain then. This is a perfect example for all those fellows on kijiji boards, that always tell to stay calm now because monopoly is not a question at all and the day kijiji maybe introduces fees you could walk away then.

Innovation is the driving force behind this new free-classifieds site called PLUGSTAR now betatesting in the US. Its new look (I call it flickr-esk) and its connections/plugins to/of other popular features such as citizen journalism (Craig is heading there also) and hotornot (rate people’s sexiness) could boost this site into a big time future. What do you think?

Recycler.com, one of the first free-classified services coming from an US newspaper company (LA Times), is now expanding rapidly. As this article from poynter.org states, they are even displaying ads from craiglist and LiveDeal.