RefreshClassifieds

New York City is considering new legislation that would make it illegal to sublet a residence for less than 30 days.  The new law seems to be in response to the popularity of  sites like Craigslist, AirBnB, Homeaway and others that allow residences to arrange short terms sublets.

The city is citing fire and safety concerns but there is also a question around taxes.  The Hotel industry in New York City is heavily taxed and short term sublets allow visitors to skip this tax.  Its not clear the popularity of these sites or the size of the short term sublet market.

New York City is set to vote on the issue this week and it will be interesting to see the impact this change has on the classified market.

Dex One, one of the leading distributors of business directories in 28 US states has reached a distribution agreement with Jingle Networks.

Jingle Networks provides a free 411 service in the US through 1-800-FREE411.  When a user call’s 1-800-FREE411 they listen to a 12 second ad that target towards the number being searched.  Most 411 or number search services in the US are on a paid search of near $1 so the advantage for the user is fairly clear.  For advertisers this provides a key intercept opportunity to reach out to customers searching for competitive products/services.

Under the new agreement Dex One customers will receive prominent placement in Jingle Network advertising.  No commercial terms have been revealed and its not clear to what degree Dex One customers are featured prominently.

Daily American, out of Somerset Country, announced this week that they will be doing to a wider classified column display with a slightly larger font size.   The move is intended to make the classified section more readable and easier to use.   Demographics are showing an older demographic are the primary print users.   These changes should make it easier for them to use the print classifieds.  Its expected that this approach would be slightly more expensive to print and produce though.  It would be interesting to see the impact of the new approach on the Daily American classified sales.

More details on the change can be found here.

The Yellow Pages Group in Canada announced earlier this year that they would no longer print and delivery phone directories to most Canadian cites.  For some time the company has also maintained a deliver option system to help reduce unwanted deliver.  You can see the form here.

Yellow Pages in Canada are still delivered to all Canadian’s households though and Dave Eaves highlights the issue in Condos here.  David also does a good job of highlighting the issue with the opt-out process.  With the end of Phone Directories it doesn’t seem that Yellow Pages Print will be far behind.

Marketing Charts has released the Top 10 US Auto Classified sites based on Hitwise traffic analysis. I believe they are combining Kijiji traffic with Ebay Motors and ignoring general classified sites like Craigslist. As a result I’m sure its an accurate analysis. The chart can be seen here:

And more details here.

Google UK this week launched property listings on Google Map searches.  On any map search users can now click on the “More” function and choose property listings near their search address.  The lists can also be refined to include only properties for sale or rent.

It would appear that Google is going directly to Real Agents for the data including Zoopla, SmartNewHomes, Spicer Haart and Countrywide.  This represent a significant by pass in that Google is not using the data from the local Real Estate board or from any classified media outlets.

At this point its not clear how complete the data set is or how aggressively Google plans to promote or expand the functionality to other regions.

Classifieds have traditionally been a very local transaction. In most cases buy and seller agree on a price and exchange the merchandise locally. Both sides seem to perfer this because the risk of fraud is greatly reduce with an enhanced benefit that auxillary costs like shipping and taxes can be avoid.

Its with some interest that we’re watching the Glyde.com beta and how it attempts to break this model. Glyde has choose to focus exclusively on the resale of the Books, CD, DVDs and Video games. All of these items can be fairly easily compared, if you have a Home Alone DVD its generally the same as millions of other copies of the movie. All of these items are also fairly easy to ship.

The Glyde system works by allowing a buyer to purchase an item ( unseen ) and receive it from an unknown seller. Once a purchase has been made Glyde will send a self-address envelope to the seller to collect the goods and take them to the buyer. The system also includes a set to transaction rules outlined here. Maybe the most interesting one is the situation where an item is lost in transit and both parties ( buy and seller ) pay for the item, and Glyde only waives its transaction fee.

Glyde.com presents an interesting model for Classifieds and it will be interesting to see if it can get traction.

Ebay has released a very cool map/video of Black Friday transactions on their website, you can see it here:

http://www.ebayholiday.com/black-friday

If your not familar with Black Friday, its a mainly US phenomia where retailers enter into the “Black” for the year with the beginning of the Christmas holiday shopping.  Most retailers offer significant discounts to get people shopping, and it seems that this trend matchs well with Ebay Transactions online.

Of particular interest is the number of Transactions that appear on the East Coast.  Ebay original started as on the West Coast but it would appear to be much more widely penetrated across the East Coast of the US or prehaps East Coast retailers are more aggressive with their Black Friday sales/discounts…

Note:  This post can also be found on colin.smillie.ca

Facebook has launched an updated Marketplace powered by the Oodle classfied service.  The relationship was initially announced a few months ago and has just launched today.  Leading up to the launch Facebook deprecated their Marketplace API, there is currently no way for Facebook Applications or Facebook Connect sites to publish to Facebook Marketplace.

The Facebook Marketplace had been neglected by Facebook with their focus on developing other areas of the platform.  It seemed like most of the Marketplace listings ( atleast in the Toronto area ) did come through the Marketplace API so it will be interesting to see how the new launch is received.

Oodle has been doing very as the online classified partner of choice for many online communities, including Myspace and AOL.  I was lucky enough to meet Craig Donato a few years ago at an ICMA conference but I’m impressed with the way he’s grown the business.  I’m sure there are many Newspaper executives are also envious of the Oodle growth.

Google is quickly becoming the dominate source for business directory listings.  Sensis announced they have partnered with Google to provide all of their business listings.  Sensis is the leading publishing of business directories and classified products in Australia.  No commercial terms were disclosed on the partnership but Google Australia and Sensis indicated there would be a revenue sharing relationship.

Google has a similar partnership with the Yellow Pages Group in Canada and competes aggressively in the US market with its Google maps service.

It would appear that more deals like this are invitable with the popularity of the Google Maps services and the ability to search business listings.  Business directory provides will need to negotiate with Google if they want to stay part of the advertising relationship or risk advertisers going directly to Google.