17th Aug 2007
Ebay hedges with Gumtree
Ebay’s Gumtree.com classified site has launched into the US markets of Boston, New York and Chicago. Gumtree has been operating of out the the United Kingdom and been very popular in London. The site is offers free listings similar to Craigislist but has a more developed user interface like Kijiji. Ebay seems to be determined to hedge its bets in the classified market with a variety of overlapping websites brands. Ebay has the following classified sites in play:
- Craigslist, through a minority share purchase
- Kijiji.com, popular out of the Canada and now entering the US
- Gumtree.com, popular out of the UK and now entering the US
- Rent.com, one of the leading rental sites in US
It will be interesting to see the impact of the Kijiji and Gumtree on Ebay’s Rent.com business but I suspect that the biggest impact is Craigslist. Its not clear how much Ebay is involved or learning from Craigslist. In past interviews with Jim Buckmaster, he’s indicated that ebay’s involvement was minimal.
Missing from the Ebay arsenal of Classified sites is a major player in the Automotive space. Automotive Classifieds have traditionally been the biggest earner and it would not be a surprise to see Ebay add an Automotive Classified site to augment its Ebay Motors Auction service. Ebay may also look to part with print advertisers to try to get additional review from reserve publishing to the failing print classified publishers.
eBay has bought 10s of small classifieds sites to create Kijiji. It would like to beat craigslist, like many others (oodle.com, backpage.com, olx.com, …)
because thats the only thing most people know, when they think about “Classified ads”
I hope that Craigslist will add some features after getting threatened by so much competition