Why can’t brothers and sisters just get along? As I noted earlier this month, eBay’s free classifieds site Kijiji is coming on strong since its launch in the U.S. last summer. Of course, eBay owns 25 percent of Craigslist, but since the other 75 percent is not for sale, eBay is putting all of its eggs into Kijiji and taking Craigslist head on.
In January, Kijiji had 2.3 million U.S. visitors, which made it the sixth largest classifieds site in the U.S., according to comScore. In six months, Kijiji has grown to be about ten percent the size of Craigslist (which had 26.7 million unique visitors in the U.S.). Worldwide, the numbers are much closer. Kijiji had 21.6 million visitors in January, compared to Craigslist’s 27.8 million.
Yesterday, Jacob Aqraou stopped by my office. He is the eBay executive who runs Kijiji and eBay’s other classifieds sites around the world (including Marketplaats in the Netherlands, Loquo in Spain, and Gumtree in the UK, Australia, South Africa, and Poland). All told, Kijiji operates sites across 700 cities in 20 countries. But Aqraou was pretty clear about who he wants to kill:
We play to win. We will win in the U.S. Six months in, the U.S. is the best launch we have had and we have not put any money into it. This year we will make significant inroads. And we will be No. 1 in the U.S.
He is not claiming that he will pass Craigslist this year, but he does not strike me as a patient man. Why did eBay launch Kijiji in the first place back in 2005? Says Aqraou:
We did not believe Craigslist was going to be successful internationally with an English-only site. Craigslist has had zero localization. It is all English, run out of San Francisco.
And that is not his only problem with Craigslist. He contends that the bare-bones site has failed to evolve:
They went lean and that allowed them to be early when there was no revenue. The site still looks the same as it did 12 years ago. Users expect more. The bar goes up in terms of user interface, trust, and safety. If you stay still, you get run over.
Now, there is revenue—advertising. And that is bringing the sharks into Craigslist’s once-friendly, non-profit waters. Kijiji is eBay’s fastest growing business. Revenues worldwide grew 104 percent last quarter (from what base, eBay will not say). Expect to see a big marketing push this year on eBay’s part to drive traffic to Kijiji in the U.S. Fees for featuring items, improvements to the site’s navigation, and tools for easier listings are also coming soon.
It doesn’t matter how beautiful a classifieds site is if you cannot find anything there. In terms of the sheer number of listings and things you can find on each site—the single most important factor for success—Kijiji still has a long way to go to catch up with Craigslist. But Aqraou does have a point about Craigslist’s user interface. Searching for stuff is hard. You can’t sort by price. And there are no images in the results pages (only on individual item pages).
Does Craig Newmark have anything to worry about, or is Aqroau just talking smack?
Here is Kijiji:
And here is Craigslist:
backpage.com – They have been around for awhile and seem to have a good better presence than the jjjiiijjj site. Not as much junk as CL.
Backpage.com is owned and operated by New Times / Village Voice Media. Our offices are located in the historic New Times building in Downtown Phoenix, Arizona.
“Users expect more. The bar goes up in terms of user interface, trust, and safety”
I wonder how true this assumption is, what those “more” mean? And safety? How is Kijiji (I personaly like the name,its fun to say! well at least the way I think its supposed to be said) safer than Craigslist? Is Super Kijiji going to protect me from the psycho who is coming to my apt. to pick up the dinning room table I am supposed to sell him/her or even it?!!
Kijiji will NEVER succeed over Craigslist! They underestimate one significant aspect – Craigslist has brand recognition and a Cult following that are dedicated to that brand – very similar to Apple. Users do not just use Craigslist for classified ads – they feel like they BELONG to a unique group and experience.
I love Kijiji. It looks so much better than Craigslist. I actually just closed a web design job from a free classifie listing on Kijiji. They’re a.o.k. in my books.
Am I the only person here who can see the irony here? Of course Kajigglejoo is going to stir up some spin between them and CL. They own a pretty massive portion of CL, so they have nothing to lose either way.
At any rate, I begrudgingly have to side with “Darren” on this one. Despite the fact that “Darren” is obviously somewhat involved with backpage (I’m sure his employers probably wouldn’t condone such asinine, self-promoting posts), he’s right. backpage.com is kind of the sleeper hit of the online classified world (if there is such a world). Sure, it sort of has a commercial stench about it, but it’s easily overlooked and it certainly doesn’t even come close to the sterile, corporate feel of Kajujijajajangleyjoo’s UI. And, quite frankly, I’d rather it be laid out on the table rather than very meticulously hidden like CL does. — And, yes…there’s far less garbage to sift through on backpage.
My only beef with BP is how flagrantly they throw their adult content around. Kachacha doesn’t have any adult stuff and CL hides theirs pretty well (meaning that, if you want it, you have to sort of be deliberately looking for it). However, BP is pretty over the top with it. It’s sort of hard not to trip over porn on that site. But, I guess if my only complaint it “too much porn”, it can’t be that bad, right?
P.S. Note to Kajibberjaljdhfslk: It’s going to be hard to beat CL when you have like 17 ads on your site.
Heads Up “Darren” has no affiliation to backpage. This site was key in finding me a condo in San Diego (a listing CL did not have) and thought it was a site worth mentioning. I am a long time CL user (lived in SF for 8 years) and remember the day CL sold its 25% stake to ebay. “Jeff” not every here has ulterior motives when sharing info.
Why can a the Little guy make if for a change? All these multimillion dollar companies making millions more! I List Classifieds, the little guy beats them all out at ilistclassifieds.com!
hmm, late dec 2008 and kijiiijiijj is still nothing. wonder when ebay will tire of losing money running kikjijkijjj.
As I see the era of text classifieds is coming to an end. The future is in video classified ads and that is because text and pictures can deceiving, while manipulating a video is hard for now. So video ads will ensure a higher customer satisfaction and more trust towards the seller.
How sad would it be if there were only two options for classifieds and they both don’t cater to your needs, e.g. having to pay for Personals ads or Job ads (as on Kijiji) or just a really bad layout and navigation (as on Craigslist). If you search the web, you will find many more (and better) alternatives.
Once these sites cater more to the b2b marketing world their true growth with be found.
Until then they are competing for the same hookers and people selling bicycles business.