Monday, 9 July 2007

eBay Launches Kijiji.com To Rival Craiglist.com

eBay, one of the pioneers of Web1.0 and the leaders of online marketing has quietly launched a new online classified advertising service in the United States called Kijiji.com

eBay, one of the pioneers of Web1.0 and the leaders of online marketing has quietly launched a new online classified advertising service in the United States called Kijiji.com that will rival Craiglist.com.

eBay already owns 25 per cent of Craigslist that it acquired in 2004 and has a seat on its board of directors. San Francisco based Craigslist is a free site manages classified ads for 300 cities globally and which attract 12 million new ad listings each month.

Kijiji, which means "village" in Swahili, was already launched in Canada, Germany, Italy and Taiwan. Kijiji.com is one of eBay's several classified advertising efforts outside the United States.

Kijiji was developed by a small group of eBay employees and launched under the oversight of Alex Kazim, then senior VP of new ventures at eBay.

In addition to its investment in Craigslist, eBay has acquired a number of classified marketplace sites over the years including Kijiji, Gumtree.com, LoQUo.com, Intoko, Marktplaats.nl, and mobile.de. Intoko has since been merged with Kijiji.

eBay launched Kijiji services in the US without much fanfare today. The new site has separate classified ad pages for 220 cities and allows users to buy and sell items in a variety of categories.

Despite launching a Craiglist competitor, eBay is keeping its stake intact in Craiglist and says there is enough room for competitors to survive in the market.