Ebay takes Craigslist on in the US with Kijiji
Not content with owning just 25% of online classified ad site Craigslist, Ebay has launched competitor Kijiji in the United States. Kijiji, which means “village” in Swahili, has been available in many parts of the world for awhile now but Ebay hadn’t felt that it could gain much marketshare on its home shores. The services are being offered at a pretty good price point: Free. The site hopes to later charge its users for premium services or perhaps listing ads.
At launch Kijaji supports 220 cities in every US state but it’s questionable if the attractively designed site will lure away the vibrant community of Craigslist. Odds aren’t looking good. At launch time there are only a handful of ads posted for each area. Most of the new site’s features are clones of Craigslist features with a few exceptions. Messaging is handled on site - without the need for using an external email client. Most notable is that Ebay is leveraging their acquisition of Skype by enabling “Click to Call” to put buyers in touch with sellers via VoIP. Managing the posts you made and tracking those that you’re interested in are made easier by the “My Kijiji” section, but this portion seems a bit sparse.
Other than the updated contact features and attractive interface Kijiji is a feature-for-feature copy of Craigslist without the massive number of users that makes Craigslist successful. It looks like Ebay should just be happy with the portion of the market that they already own.
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