Kijiji Talks Smack About Craigslist: “We Will Be No. 1 In the U.S.”

kijijijijijijijijij, they better hope people bookmark it…

With classified sites content is key. Kijijjijijay is just talking smack because in USA they have absolutely nothing. I wouldn’t be surprised if all the visits are from people going there to see what the buzz is about from eBay page, and then realizing that the site is deserted and has no listings. And never going back.

But if someone can take out Craigslist, its a big player like eBay because they can funnel their current users to this property. But they need about 2 years, to get even close to the same # of listings.

craigslist is easy enough that anybody can use it. why ruin a good thing? also, it has a meaningful name and not some made-up nonsense that nobody can spell.

and i guess i missed the revolutionary UI changes made to ebay.com, because it still looks the same to me after all these years, too.

i think the only dignified response from craig should be opening up craigslist to allow free auctions as well.

that wont win due to their incredibly bad name

I typed “w4m” in the search and it returned nothing.

This is why it will fail.

Craigslist will be the leader for years to come. It’s established and very simple to use. They don’t need to improve the interface. Sometimes people over think things. Also, Ebay should fire the person/people who came up with the name Kijiji. Stupid.

Damned right Benoit. All the good stuff’s missing.

Here is the truth, this has nothing to do with Kijiji or ebay talking smack . . . Jacob Aqraou is just a plain old back-stabbing ass . . . this is how he comes off at work regardless of the topic . . . to his co-workers, to his direct reports . . .

kijijijijiiji is just aweful. It’s great (for them) that they are able to monetize the site better than craigslist, but it offers such a bad user experience.

Craigslist succeeds becuase it is so simple and easy to navigate. Kijijijijijij is the next autotrader.com.

Hopefully this will encourage the Craigslist people to take some efforts at long last to stem the spam listings which are overwhelming almost every category.

Gee, could they stuff anymore i’s and j’s in that annoying url??

They will be number one as soon as the majority of it’s users win the school spelling bee.

Makes you wonder why they couldn’t leverage the eBay brand for this a bit more. Something like “eBay Listings” might have gone over better.

funny.

cl has one of the best ui’s in the business, as does google. ask glued on a bunch of useless crap (like kijiji) and it got them the #4 spot.

slow. bigmouth. fail.

i’d have to agree with most…Kijijijiji is a poor name - they’re just generating that massive traffic by having their link on eBay’s homepage…but i wonder how many return?,

and Craigslist won’t go anywhere…its simple, novel concept and design is what makes it Craigslist - hooray Craigslist!

Ebay called: They want their UI back.

one thing that Craigslist could do us update their site a bit — hunting for houses or suites for rent is a pain in the ace unless you have some nice feeds setup

The Craigslist board meetings must be a riot. I can hear it now…

J. Aqraou: So, what’s CL’s (with a smile) strategy for 2008?
Jim and Craig: Oh, not much. Were going to try and knock out this piece of crap copycat site named Kijiji.
J. Aqraou: Great. How can I help.

I’d like to have whatever the ebay execs are smokin if they think ‘Kijjiiijiiiii…whatever’ is going to take off in the US. In terms of ui/design, it’s almost a visual relief to go from Kijiijjjjijjii to Craigslist. The former looks amateur at best and was either designed by over-payed US designers or under-payed Indian programmers.

In terms of search, that is CLs area of weakness but not significant enough to be displaced by a garish looking site with an unpronounceable, error-prone url.

craiglist does not have a ‘great user interface’. give me a break. you can’t *use* the site, you have to *slog through* it. the only reasons to go there are a) they have a lot of listings b) w4m

its a piece of crap and i can’t wait for it to fall by the wayside.

i’m not saying kijiji is any good, just that craigslist sucks. it survives only because a monopoly like this is self-reinforcing.

Who was smokin’ what when they named their product kifjijijijijifjsaifjas;dflj-wtf-ever? Seriously? What if they ever wanted to do a radio advertisement for it? How would people be able to navigate to the URL?

I’m looking at the name right now and I can’t even spell it right without having to go back and correct myself. Geez, how stupid.

@19 Johnny, no one ever claimed CL had a great UI. If anything it doesnt have a UI per say, but rather, a collection of pre-sorted hyperlinks. You can’t make a web front-end any simpler than this, hence its general popularity.

another problem craigslist has is the tons of spam.

This is pannysaver vs pennysaver….

Sorry but maybe I am just an old geezer with a yahoo e-mail account but I am happy with the current pennysaver (craigslist). Anyway next month when I post my currently good but not stainless steel appliances (don’t ask - refer to better half) I guess they will be on both sites.

i prefer oodle over both of those

Does everybody forget that Ebay owns 25% of Craigslist?

what the hell..kijiji sounds like those insects screaming at night. kijiji…kjiji….

this insect cannot beat craigslist’s popularity … i really like craigslist’s UI …it’s just like the out-of-bed hairstyle …the ugly-cool look!

Personally I think however much I may like Craigslist, they are doing nothing to create barriers to the competition. Much like people wrote off search in the 90s, and how sites like CitySearch had local “locked down” in the 00s (only to see Yelp and others emerge with alarming growth), I believe if the Craigslist team continues to sit on their cash influx with no innovation, they will be overtaken.

That said, I don’t know why Kijijiji (is that too many ji’s?) is necessarily going to be the winner. I could see new upstarts do well. I could see Yelp migrate into this field pretty easily. I could even see Amazon and Google take a chunk out of the space.

For now, I’m sticking with Craigslist, but I wouldn’t be surprised to look back upon them as a faint memory one day…

Curiously absent from this discussion: OLX. They are making what sounds like serious inroads outside the US.

Kijiji is horrible and their executives don’t know their a## from a hole in the ground.

Oodle is a close second to being as bad.

While I’m all for friendly competition, I find Aqraou’s comments to be tasteless and frankly counter his entire strategy of domination in the classifieds world. If he really wants to ‘beat’ craigslist he may want to consider focusing on the user value of the service as opposed to just being the brashest guy out there. It feels like that insecure kid in high school who ripped on other people just to feel better about themselves

Where I come from, yo if you talk smack about someone, then bring the game on son!

CL is kickin’ it old school, 90’s HTML style. Kijiji (whatever) aint got nothing on them, so why JA got to be talkin hype. They own 25% of CL, then put out a competing site, then talk trash about them! WTF!

JA is all, I’m making dope money, cash moves everything around me, and Craig’s like, yo we only charge a nominal fee for job postings and apartments and that’s only in certain cities.

Ebay is just a bunch of bullies, that’s they’re leaving in droves.

Kijiji looks like E-Bay, is owned by them and is driven like a business,
A lot of Ads on Kijiji are commercial, business related.

Craigslist doesnt look or run like a commercial operation.
Do they want to look like a nice colorful website , definitely not. Their UI is reverred amongst users, for its simplicity.

I see a Mac Vs Windows type situation. brewing here.
Millions are devoted to Craigs and believe in it, its more than a classifieds site, you see people getting emotional in the context of craigs, its been around for so long. People have found first jobs, rented their apartments, bought their cars and found people to date with on Craigs over the last decade and now they are attached to it. They associate with the name.

Kijiji has made serious inroads worldwide, It dominates in the classifieds busines in places ourside the US, especially India.
Do more people know Kijiji outside the US, - Yes.
Does it have a loyal fan following ? - No
Does it have a community feeling around it ? No
Do they have money and a business plan - Yes.

Its going to be interesting to watch , how this pans out over the next two years or so. As the big money player goes against the bohemian pioneers from SF.
(Craigs is now available in Spanish in South America)

[The writer is a long time Craigslist NY user and runs a knockoff site in Mumbai in his spare time.]

http://beta.we-exchange.com

One problem with CL, other than the spam, is the socialist mentality. See the FAQ:
http://www.craigslist.org/about/help/faq#scalping
“Many craigslist users dislike, and will remove by flagging ads which appear to be scalping tickets or hot gift items for way over face value”
The whole anti-profit culture about the site tends to anger people actually trying to … gasp … sell stuff for a profit. So I do see sellers possibly moving to Kijiji and CL just turning into junk for sale and W4M in time.

Honestly, This guy Aqraou is kidding himself. Maybe he likes setting himself up for failure. He can pimp out kijiji for a hundred years and it still won’t approach Craigslist. I can tell he doesn’t understand his own business when he makes statements like this. If he would like to improve his chances, he should begin with ditching the kijiji name. That dog won’t hunt.

I really don’t know why anyone complains about search on craigslist. Just use google with the “site:craigslist.com” filter no big deal.

As far as everyone dissing the “w4m” listings … sure what ever.. but it also means that you won’t have to worry about stupid corporate lawyers worrying about the brand name being tarnished.

As far as the “no scalping rule” … hey every community has its set of rules and uniquenesses. There is also a high desire on craigslist to do community self-policing. Considering E-bay’s indifference to fraudulent auctions, I see that as a good thing. And scalping is arguable ‘fraudulent’. Certainly, I get pissed off when a concert is sold out fast because half the tickets have been siphoned off by scalpers.

Erick - “The site still looks the same as it did 12 years ago.”, imho, is by design. The bare-bones simple site engenders trust (between themselves and in the corporation) and familiarity (no learning curve).
There is no site out there, again imho, that brings out the best amongst people generally. Think of Digg on the other hand
Personal experience - sold my motorcycle to a buyer who paid me cash without physically looking/or getting it. He then picked it up by himself from a friend’s garage!
I bought my current motorcycle from there too - the seller has “become” (not add friend) a friend.

I think a lot of people in the US underestimate the advantage that companies like Kijiji and Adoos have over Craigslist, in terms of learning how to be successful in competitive markets - ie not the US.

Until now many companies have been afraid to enter the US, thinking that no one can overcome Craigslist in terms of traffic….Well, with the right marekjeting strategy you can build your traffic very quickly. The bad news for Craigslist is that not having had any real competitors until now, they aren’t really prepared for what’s coming. If you are successful at driving traffic, content will come, which will bring more traffic etc…. A couple of years from now I am not so sure Craigslist will be such a dominant player..

Mike, great comment! And I agree that it seems that a lot of people have been afraid to take on CL, but if you look at what Google did when Yahoo and MSN already existed…it can be done!

Kijiji has the advantage of testing the site in other countries, and also having been able to tap into how CL operates. They have an advantage there, and an advantage with the money behind them.

But competition can be a good thing! And yes, CL has the traffic, but there are still a lot of people who don’t know about the site, or don’t like the site, and I think there’s room for new ideas and new technology.

I actually was inspired to start a site because I was frustrated with a lot of the way CL works…the navigation is sloppy, it’s boring, sometimes confusing…and slammed with spam. While it has worked for me sometimes, sometimes it doesn’t…and I just find it very limiting.

So I launched http://www.Listasaurus.com, and tried to add a bit more functionality, including VIDEO classifieds, which is the next logical step for online classifieds. We also have a Business Directory (can put video there too) where you don’t have to keep reposting your ads to stay on top like CL (one of the things that drives me nuts!).

We’re just a little guy starting out right now–and it’s coming along nicely–but hey, everyone has to start somewhere. Would love to hear feedback from anyone who has any!

Oh…and we also pay users simply for listing with us…something a little bit different too!

Great chat everyone!

Great idea, Melanie!

I’ve actually tried Listasaurus.com, and I LOVE the fact that it offers video classifieds. It’s so much easier to see what the item looks like, in all angles, and whether it actually works! Video allows for creativity and increased sales—and it’s fun, too! Plus, paying users to list is an awesome idea, I don’t know of anyone else out there doing that.

Best of luck and much success, Listasaurus.com!!

Pretty interesting and note-worthy to see an executive using design as the primary strategy for overtaking Craigslist.

While having a nice looking and easy-to-navigate UI is important, it’s not enough to make up for lack in ability. I recently used CL and Kijiji to look for an apartment and I quickly gave up using Kijiji. It just didn’t give me the search options I needed to refine my search.

I agree with some of the other comments when it comes to Kijiji getting most of it’s following from e-bay.

CL has been around now for some time has loads of traffic and is doing well. If it ain’t broke why fix it?

In my opinion, Kijiji has a stupid name therefore no Branding possible, craiglists has an unfriendly interface. The market’s open for anybody that already has a user base… like say Facebook Marketplace.

CL just needs to tweak up their UI and feature set a little bit. I think they definitely need a reputation system! Especially when you are doing face to face meetups for items. Other than that, their web 1.0 interface and ease of use makes it easy for anyone to use. They don’t aim to please the tech savvy crowd, their core users still have CRT tv’s and probably have never heard of techcrunch.

Guys, guys, how about Metromole.com. This site blows both craigslist and Kijiji out of the water. Except in terms of users. We’re working on that.

What big mouths kijiji are. The site is not intuitive for the occasional net user that wants to find/sell/meet something.

K.I.S.S…..if CL makes any changes I hope they are minor.

Kijiji is succeeding in spite of its branding, which makes you wonder just how big Ebay could make a classifieds site if the name was not so difficult to remember.

Over time, Kijiji could become a powerful and unique one-word brand like Google or Yahoo but, until then, Craigslist will remain the superior “everything to everyone” brand.

And this whole debate is somewhat silly since Ebay wins no matter what happens.

Did Anybody Notice?? Kijiji - Free Classifieds
Kijiji Canada has added a new feature to link a URL inside your Free ad. My sense is you can expect a wide spread implementation to be available after the Canadian test period.
This is a long overdue feature but they seem to have included another feature along with the link. A $4.00 charge for the ability to add a clickable URL. It does not appear this link is designed for adding externally hosted images to the content, strictly a web site URL .

You have always been able to insert a text URL which visitors can copy and paste, but now for $4.00 you can insert a Hyper Link to a relevant page. Of course you can use PayPal (another eBay company) to pay for the surcharge. They also doubled the cost of premium services such as featuring your ad to the Top Ads section (paid ad area) from $5.00 to $9.99 for 3 days to 19.99 for 7 days.

So now you can get a completely ‘Free Ad’ for $23.99 at the top of the page with a link to your web site. If it works out in Canada, just a matter of time in the US. Kijiji (eBay) is in the business of making money, not Free Classifieds

I love reading all of this…most people are completely clueless about Craigslist. You all think they are running a classifieds charity or something, and it is evil that someone like Kijiji or eBay actually want to make money. Hate to burst your bubble, but Craig and his company are worth millions and millions. It is kind of similar to the guy who runs Burning Man….living in his million dollar home, with millions in his bank account. It is harsh reality to take in for all you tech charity geeks who have such allegiance to a stupid classifieds web site.

never heard anyone say ‘oh, post it on kijiji’ or ‘have you checked kijiji?’

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.