Word: craigslisters
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...even as Craigslist continues to thrive - it's expected to rake in some $80 million this year - the site's design and user experience have changed little since it began. "There is a stunning lack of innovation in classifieds," says Craig Donato, founder and CEO of Oodle, which doubled the number of monthly visitors to its site over the past year to nearly two million. The San Mateo, Calif., company with 50 employees and some $19 million in venture capital funding recently made headlines for its deal to host classifieds on walmart.com. Once just a search site that scraped listings...
...Launched in 1995 and currently available in 567 cities and 55 countries, the San Francisco-based Craigslist has had a near monopoly on listings for apartments, cars, relationships and used furniture ever since. The keys to its success have been the (mostly) free listings and a grassroots, community focus that relies heavily on users flagging inappropriate ads. Although it is now a for-profit business with 25 employees (the dot-org suffix is pure nostalgia), the site's founder, Craig Newmark, still refers to it as a "public service" rather than a profit-driven venture...
...what's to ogle at Oodle? Unlike Craigslist or Kijiji, this site automatically displays a Google map next to each listing so you can easily pinpoint its location. Oodle also shows you how the price of, say, a scooter you are browsing compares with the average price of scooters listed on the site over the past few months. All listings are free, but sellers can pay a few bucks to get more prominent placement of their ad in search results. Buyers can also get mobile alerts when a listing that meets your criteria pops up on the site...
...Whereas Oodle excels in technology, Kijiji is the only general-purpose classified site that is catching up with Craigslist in terms of actual listings. Three years ago, Kijiji didn't even exist. Today it is the top online classified service in France, Germany and Taiwan. It's also neck and neck with Craigslist in Canada. Combined with eBay's other international classified hubs - which include Marktplaats in the Netherlands and Gumtree in the United Kingdom - eBay's portfolio of classifieds actually get more unique visitors around the globe than Craigslist. (As eBay's core auction business has slowed, its classifieds...
...secret to Kijiji's success, says Jacob Aqraou, general manager of eBay's classified division, is an improved user interface and a more vigilant approach to scaring off scammers and spammers. Whereas Craigslist feels hippie and homegrown, Kijiji features niceties such as images that appear in search results by default and more intuitive menus for refining your search. To drum up interest, eBay also spammed millions of its most active members when Kijiji's U.S. site launched in June...