It’s not yet a Craigslist killer, but eBay’s free classifieds site Kijiji is taking off in the U.S. eBay, of course, is also an investor in Craigslist, but its 25 percent stake doesn’t give it a controlling interest and the other 75 percent is not for sale. So in March, 2005, eBay launched Kijiji as its own competing free classifieds site overseas. Then last summer, it launched a U.S. version of the site.
Since then, the U.S. site alone has grown from 362,000 visitors in July, 2007 to 1.8 million in January, according to comScore. (If you count U.S. visits to Kijiji’s international sites as well, the number is 2.3 million). In comparison, Microsoft’s classified site, Windows Live Expo, attracted only 176,000 visitors in January, Yahoo Classifieds attracted 97,000, and neither Google’s classifieds site nor Google Base even registers on comScore.
Kijiji’s visitor stats are still less than 10 percent of the 26.7 million people in the U.S. who went to Craigslist in January, but comScore puts Kijiji as the sixth most visited classifieds site in the U.S. (after Craigslist, sites owned by Dominion Enterprises like Homes.com, AutoTrader, Cars.com, and Apartments.com). Kijiji is ahead of classifieds sites like Oodle (No. 9, with 1.3 million U.S. visitors in January) and Vast (No. 20, with 444,000).
eBay is obviously doing something right with Kijiji. But can it ever catch up to Craigslist?
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Wonder how this is going to play out.
Surely there is some conflict of interest ? or is it reasonable for a investor to have stakes in 2 competing companies ?
can somebody who knows about this kind of stuff fill us all in ?
cheers
its like a nicely designed craigslist.
i wonder if this will put any pressure on craig to pimp out his site a little.
i mean hell, i have been using listpic just because its easier on the eyes and faster to browse
Your stories are so much better to read than Duncan’s.
this sounds like a coke vs coke zero case…..duh duh duhaduh duh
i’ll be caught dead before uttering kijiji to someone
I’m pretty sure the reason for it…is because kijiji is spending a shitton of money advertising on radio
also why are you comparing this to Google Classifieds which is just a directory of classfieds sites, and not to Google Base?
ki-WHO-ji?
kijiji is a link in the footer of all ebay owned websites. How could it not grow from being attached to one of the top 10 online properties?
Users only surf to this site, no one (outside of swahili speakers) would ever remember how to spell it.
I saw a new one which looked nice but isn’t 100% functioning yet, but had cool features. http://www.jicka.com
I think it’s about time for CL to introduce an API and let others build front ends to it
It’s a nice site.
Oodle’s founder is Scott Kister (not Kisher)
Horrible name. Who is going to remember how to type kijijijijijiji vs. craigslist?
stupid name. reminds me of hana-jiji, hana-jiji.
It’s a nice site, well done and a good update to the Craigslist way of doing things but the name / brand is horrible! Not because of the meaning of the name but because it’s just so weird. So many times I’ve tried to go to the kijiji url, spelling things wrong and ended up somewhere else. For a while I couldn’t even remember the name at all. For this reason, I still don’t think Craigslist has much to fear from Kijiji.
Gotta say these are small numbers. Edgeio had way more than this in December.
Keith
@3, except when he’s slamming old farts.
Nice to read. we provide free global classifieds for free. Its Triimart - care business, care environment.
I tried selling a few things on craigslist last year and found it to be nearly useless. The area is ripe for some competition.
I am currently rolling a product into beta that is very similar to all sites listed above. http://www.inzino.com with various social tools along with many internal functions and posting management utilities. At the end of the day the bottleneck is convincing users to transition over from CL and their “community” storefront. I was an advocate for CL for years… however there are things that simply let me down. 1. Posting restrictions… obviously we don’t want a spam machine on our hands however it would be nice to post an ad for free lance web development services in multiple locations with one ad. Currently posting ads in multi cities is near impossible and frustrating 2. User background info. I have had many good experiences and many bad experiences using CL…I could have eliminated the bad via user review or endorsements. So quite frankly I feel CL has no reason to worry about new services popping up anytime soon… however if feel they are becoming more and more antiquated everyday. Which is why I created inzino. Cheers.
Something was published on techcrunch.com (a new ad?) between yesterday evening and this morning that causes a complete browser crash for Safari on Leopard.
This is truly unfortunate, because Techcrunch is set as my homepage, which means that unless I do something dramatic like reinstall somehow, I can’t open Safari until you fix this.
@7, good point. Google Base doesn’t register either. i updated the post.
visitors might be many but since their official launch in the Bay Area till now, the postings on Kijiji seem dismal. Their overseas classifieds look more promising.
TC gets so much spammers now.
Will ebay just be happy with its 25% stake, because Craigslist will absolutely embarass that kiwi sounding imitation of a classified site.
Kijiji has overtaken Craigslist in Canada now. I blogged about it 2 weeks ago:
http://www.storyofastartup.com/?p=59
At least in Canada, SEO is playing the largest part in their growth.
eBay is obviously doing something right with Kijiji. But can it ever catch up to Craigslist?
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Craigslist has a more recognizable brand and that will keep it alive for a long time. In fact I hadn’t heard of Kijiji (very hard to remember or type) until mentioned in TC.
More exposure needed?
This is a paid review, right?
Of course it’s a paid review. Backpage.com has a higher traffic volume than Kijiji.com, not to mention a much easier name to pronounce and they’ve been competing for Craiglist for a longer period of time… Maybe Backpage.com just isn’t Web 2.0 sounding enough.
come on, nothing will ever touch cl.
Do not forget gumtree.com, which is also owned by Ebay. Stepping out of the ‘Commonwealth’ areas, Gumtree/Ebay launched in August 2007 with regional sites in the USA (right now only Boston, Chicago and NYC AFAIK).
Is it just me or does this sound way too close to vajayjay?
I don’t see how they can be that good if they don’t have major metro areas on their list. For NY state they have:
Albany
Binghamton
Buffalo
Hudson Valley
Ithaca
New York
Rochester
Syracuse
Utica-Rome
Missing is Long Island, with a population of 3 Million, 7.5 Million if you include Queens and Brooklyn, it has a population larger then most of the other NY metros listed. Good job eBay! I guess that’s what you can expect when your dealing with a west coast company.
Queens and Brooklyn and LI are probably lumped into New York just like in real life. Even craigslist focuses mostly on New York and only has a sub tab to narrow it further by borough, which my guess is not many people do.
Hell for New Jersey, all we get is North, South, Central wtih craigslist, and the state is a tiny amount bigger than New York
Agreed for Queens/Brooklyn, but not for the rest of LI. After all, when you have to drive over a bridge or tunnel to get somewhere (where the tolls cost an arm and a leg) I wouldn’t consider that the same area.
Besides, craigslist has an LI specific site: longisland.craigslist.org, guess it can’t be all bad.
http://www.alexa.com/data/deta.....ize=Medium
buhahaha
alexa is the most accurate tool (it correlates perfectly with our internal data, unlike comescores, compete.com etc)
In my hometown (London, ontario) Kijiji is MUCH more heavily used than craigslist. it’s unfortunate that it is so peppered with ads.
People often look for craigslist alternate, hope this could be one.
I think free classifieds is a good area but you need to cover the areas you cover very well for people to find it worthwhile.
This is almost too easy a target, but kijiji is a ridiculous name. I thought it might be meaningless, but it turns out it’s Swahili for village. Nonetheless, anyone outside Swahili-speaking areas (i.e. most of the target audience) is going to find it very difficult to pronounce or remember.
Here’s an idea - how about renaming it eBay Classifieds? Use the branding and tell people exactly what it does. Brilliant. My consultancy fee is $3,000 an hour.
You guys should do some research and see how many people misspell craigslist or get the name wrong completely. “Gregs List” is a pretty high traffic term in Google…
even in Europe is Kijiji very powerful indeed. The best results and very popular is Kijiji in Germany, France and UK. As a international company ebay get a very big growthrate outside the US with Kijiji Europe.
kijiji functionality is sweet and craig is somewhat of a turd, but in sf & nyc, craigslist reigns supreme. sure, it’s a haven for whackjobs, but when i’ve needed to sell furniture and snowboard equipment in both markets, kijiji was a complete waste of time.
Free sites like craigslist and Kijiji are ok — but because they are free you have to put up with thousands of “spam” ads or ads that are fraudulent. And because every man and his dog can post to these sites, any ad you put up is likely visible for only a day or so before it is pushed so far down the list you fall off the bit bucket …
I think sites that charge a nominal fee to post, are ad free, and review ads and keep the spammers away are well worth it, ie: http://www.rentboard.ca for apartments and rentals in Canada. I had way better response from their site then I did with my “free” ad on Kijiji.
Hey there,
I will have to disagree with you on that one (re:free websites) ….. here’s a new service that I have just launched - http://www.rentplanet.ca … and we operate pretty much the same way as those paid ones, but we are free for landlords (and tenants). we are still new, so go check it out
How we are different from kijiji, etc? - we specialize in rental listings (for Canadian landlords and tenants).
Cheers. Helen
http://www.rentplanet.ca
I like much more OLX.
Its name is easier to remember and they are doing great in many countries.
I think they started like a year ago, so I think we’ll see much more from them in the following months.
Check it at http://www.olx.com
On the footer of the page you can choose from many countries and languages.
I live in Spain and use Adoos to buy and sell my stuff - it works great!!
They are launching globally - and seem to be doing well in France, Italy. I have checked out their US site, and they really have worked hard on tailoring the product to the market - using local language, and getting the geography right.
This is why craigslist has failed abroad - they have not made the effort to localise.
Companies like Adoos have - which is why I think that they are really well prepared to make it big in the US.
Check it out: http:// http://www.adoos.com
I have it on good authority that, phonetically, “kijiji” means “small boy’s penis” in Chinese. I’m not even kidding.
I just heard about this site last week and thought it looked a little more fun than Craigslist… come on, isn’t it time for a facelift on that site… I know it’s simply classifieds, but Kijiji’s bright colours are nice. I’ve got to use it to see how it’s user base grows. Success will be determined by the user experience… bright colours won’t overshadow a poor lead generation rate.
kijiji is looking much better than craigslist and easy to use as well
There are a lot of things I don’t like about craigslist but there’s no way I’m ever visiting this site until they change their name.