Johann

“Time for Craigslist to change their UI ..”
“unless it is completely new, there is no chance for craigslist replicas!!!”
“But we really love our baby”

Hence: http://www.totalbazaar.com
‘Live’ Demo ( with fake data ): http://demo.totalbazaar.com

Simple idea:
- classifieds
- single entry point ( no multiple websites, at least not in the US )
- simple interface ( i know, CL et al already have something simple)
- kick-ass UI; no reason why all classifieds websites should have almost identical looks ( some of you will disagree, so I will remind you of quote #3: “… we really love our baby … ” )
- and why do you have to click when a pure text search should be at least as good if not better?
- and eventually Web 2.0 widgets ( eventually because we want to get the basics “right” first time before going crazy with features )

Still in it’s infancy, currently only in the US, but I’m not making any promises Fabrice - well, let’s first see if the seemingly popular and, in my opinion, defeatist view of “you cannot compete with CL” can be challenged - and then we might think of branching out.

I do not want to hijack this thread since it’s meant for OLX, so if you have comments about http://www.totalbazaar.com, send me mail at daudimc@hotmail.com. All the best to OLX.

easy.

Congrats Alexis you´re gold as part of the team.

Great Team+ Great Product (very nice implementation btw)+ Great Business proposal= Gol

In most other countries, I am seeing growth for all sites in classifieds and not just the winner. In Spain, Segundamano, Loquo and MundoAnuncio are all doing well. In the US there is only Craigslist, but it’s not as though there was a few large horizontal free classified sites that they fought an extensive war with to win. They were the only ones pursuing that strategy.

Regarding focus, I agree with you. We are in 40 countries, but actually only focusing on a subset of those. I do not intend to get in the middle of your fight with Kijiji (ebay) and Subito (Schibstedt). The winner in Italy will likely be one of you three. If we get lucky, we can become relatively big, but I am not counting on it. Likewise in France - I have no intention of getting in the middle of the fight between VivaStreet, Kijiji (eBay) and LeBonCoin (Schibstedt).

Given the amounts they are investing (around 10 million euros per country in Spain (for Segudamano where they are doing TV ads in prime time), France and Italy, they look like they will be the short run winners. I wonder though if their long term strategy is not to charge for listings. If they did they will generate a lot of revenues in the short and medium run, but it opens up opportunities for people like us. Most of the free sites intend to charge for listings at some point - even if only for job listings or real estate listings. That will always create an opportunity for OLX. We do not intend to charge for listings EVER. And when we introduce “Featured Listings” we won’t display all the featured listings first (as Livedeal and eBay do) that would essentially be like charging. We will only display three that randomly rotate.

So we will launch everywhere around the world (we have 40 more countries and 25 more languages in the pipe right now). We will seed the market and see what happens. We will then focus on wherever we happen to take off and bide our time in the other markets until an opportunity happens.

Good luck in your war!

have you seen http://www.shopandsave.com

They offer free local classifieds with video listings. Its the worlds safest classifieds

Excellent this discussion on TechCrunch !

Before nothing, i (as part of the OLX team) want to give you the thanks for all the feedback and for your interest in our project: both critics and greetings are welcome (we are very sure of what we are trying to do here and we are happy with our mission and vision…However we ALWAYS LOVE TO HEAR..This is internet!: if you don´t hear you loose).

YouYap.com: i like what you say about: “How will you compete with something that is FREE”…That´s a really good question. But don´t get us wrong in relation with that point: like Fabrice said it´s important that you understund that as today we are not loosing our dream thinking in how will we do to beat Craigslist in the U.S.. Again…We love Craigslist and we know that they are the LEADERS IN THE U.S.
When we raised money from our investors we didn´t asked them: “Hi guys…Do you know Craigslist?…Well…We want to take their cake…Their are making a lot of money in the U.S. and we think we can beat them in 1 or 2 years”…Our goal is not the U.S….We are a global company with a global project and (always knowing that we would love to be successful in the U.S.) we are trying to offer a great transactional experience/alternative all over the world (Craigslist is not the leader everywhere and THERE is where we see a great opportunity both for users and for us). However, on another hand, do you remember when Altavista was one of the leaders in online search? :-P…Nothing is impossible in this world. I will recommend you this interesting article from Fabrice´s blog: http://www.fabricegrinda.com/?p=246

Johnyzar: well…A lot of things…Paying salaries (this point is not a “childs game”….We are 100 employees aprox. and that represents A LOT OF MONEY year by year), hiring the best people in our regions. Like you may know, we invest in online advertising, etc. And the most important thing is that we will be able to continue investing in technology and infrastructure (an example of this could be our Mobile version in which we are working very hard).
On another hand, with some of our budget, if we think that it would empower our business we will be able to make strategic acquisitions and partnerships too.

Marc: :-)…We defend a baby in who we trust 100% (we are not blind or something like that…We think that we face a REAL big challenge and we are committed in giving a GREAT AND FREE alternative to our users). In relation with Spain, we think that Loquo does a great job but one of our companies, MundoAnuncio.com, does it too and the brand has a REALLY BIG penetration in Spain. Btw, Loquo is not the only big player…Segundamano is absolutely huge too.

Yakov: thanks a lot for your clean perspective and for covering us in the Quintura´s blog. I really love the work you are doing with Quintura!. Are you coming to Buenos Aires one of these days?

Gaston: thanks a lot!!!…Congratulations on Geelbe too! (i heard you are about to launch).

Webhosting Advice : we are working very hard on it. That´s one of our challenges and THESE are the kind of things that make us loose our dream (our product, our service, not if Craigslist is the leader in the U.S.).

To finish with my post i would like to leave a great thought that i heard time ago from a friend of mine. It says something like this but i don´t remember how exactly it was:
“There are three types of people in this world
1 - Great people talk about ideas,
2 - Normal people talk about things, (This is how the phrase was but i don´t like this bullet too much because everybody talks about things).
3 - Mediocre people talk about other people.”

At OLX, we like to think that we are englobed into the first type of people (despite we talk about things too :-P). We KNOW that we are just another group of people trying to make things happen and we are not blind at all (we know that Craigslist is the absolute leader in the U.S., for example…It´s our business, not a game…We know the worldwide leaders and players). But we really love our baby and we think we are a great team, with a great vision, and facing a huge global oportunity.

We don´t really spend our day to day talking about Craigslist because we are too busy performing our own product in which we believe.

Thanks again for all friends!

We will be here responding!

Alexis.