On Friday, eBay launched a new free classifieds service to the United States named Kijiji. The web site, which currently supports 220 US cities in all 50 states, is a lot like Craigslist in that it offers users the option to select the region they're in and choose from a list of for-sale items that they're interested in browsing, as well as the option to sell items for free.
Kijiji, Swahili for "village," was originally launched in March of 2005 and is available in over 300 cities and 20 markets worldwide. It allows users to post classified items like cars, kittens, and ice skates for sale in a newspaper classified fashion. Craigslist, which was launched by Craig Newmark in 1995, falls short of Kijiji perhaps in terms of aesthetics. Craigslist's organization consists primarily of a global list of cities. Kijiji makes regional classifieds different by providing a graphical map to choose your search area, as well as graphics and colors that make the browsing experience a bit more pleasant and easy to use.
When I spoke to Hani Durzi, director of corporate communications for eBay, he said Kijiji plans to "grow organically at a grassroots level," and now that the site is up and running in the US, they want users to come on their own accord. When asked why eBay decided to launch Kijiji in the US after already owning 25% of Craigslist, Mr. Durzi said that "Craigslist has its own management team and operates on its own. [eBay] plays a minority role and lets Craigslist do what it wants to do. We learn from each other." The competing sites, however, have different outlooks for the future.
When asked whether Kijiji sees Craigslist as competition, Mr. Durzi replied, "Yes, Craigslist is a competitor, but we feel there's room for two or more classified sites, and we plan to bring our expertise of bringing buyers and sellers together from eBay to Kijiji." eBay is also looking into how they can make Kijiji a better marketplace, perhaps by adding PayPal which Mr. Durzi said "would be looked into as a safe way to pay."
Yesterday, Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster told the Wall Street Journal that "Many companies offer classifieds, but since we don’t concern ourselves with considerations such as market share or revenue maximization, we don’t think of them as competition or as a challenge to Craigslist." Posting to Craigslist is free, but it's also free to post on Kijiji, and it's hard to believe that with a new competitor on the market, Craigslist doesn't worry about revenue made from its job posting service, which ranked just behind CareerBuilder in terms of applicants per job as of November 2006.
Susan MacTavish, a spokeswoman for Craigslist, said, "The only changes we ever make on Craigslist are based on user feedback. Our users are our number one priority. We are not influenced by other sites nor swayed by their actions. If Craigslist users find a site that is more useful to them than Craigslist, a site that listens to them and responds to their requests, they should use that site, no?"
Sometimes, however, users don't always know what it is they want until it has already been developed for them, and perhaps that's where Kijiji will flourish. Kijiji, for example, currently has Skype support which allows buyers and sellers contact each other in real-time through a Skype "call me" button, if need be. MacTavish, however, added that Craigslist changes are "always small and incremental" and that Craigslist plans to launch "another 50 sites or so very soon, and [expects] to have foreign languages sites by year's end."
In my area of Pennsylvania, there isn't a ton of for-sale posts up yet, but the site hasn't even been active for a whole week. The big question I keep asking myself is: why should I move to Kijiji from Craigslist? Sure, it's graphically pleasing and easy to navigate, but simplicity is what drew people to Craigslist in the first place and there isn't anything wrong with Craigslist—except the inability to communicate with potential buyers and sellers in real-time unless a phone number is provided on the listing page. It will be exciting to see how both sites change the face of the online classifieds market as the two compete for larger user bases.
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