RefreshClassifieds

China Telecom has announced that they will separate their directory business from their Telecom unit. The spin off will receive $47M in capital and be run by the head of the China Telecom Shanghai division. No information on ownership structure was disclosed, in fact China Telecom has made no official announcement on the spin off. A variety of mainstream Chinese media are covering the spin off so its expected to be reliable.
The spin off news follows a partnership earlier this year with Google to sell advertising on the directory sites and with Microsoft to provide search functionality for the sites. A a minimum China Telecom appears to be setting up the directory business to grow independently of its Telecom service group. The Telecom service grow is starting to slow but the Business Directory business should be in a good position to grow, especially with partnerships with Google and Microsoft.

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.

Seattle based Jobster has launched an affiliate network, hot on the heels of their Facebook application success. Both the Facebook application and the affiliate network let employers publish their job listings to a wider array of readers. One of the most difficult segments to reach in the employment vertical are the 18-24 year olds which are critical for the retail and hospitality employment categories. The Jobster Facebook application process a great tool to target these younger employees in a social network that where they are actively engaged.

The Jobster affiliate network includes 650 web sites and will provide 45M visitors per month. Its great to see a company promoting monthly visitors instead of the often quoted and completely useless page view statistics. The affiliate network includes the following sites:

• Edgeio – jobs partner for major blogs and job boards including: Techcrunch, Gizmodo and The Washington Post.
• Getit LLC – jobs partner for more than 350 niche job boards including: getcustomerservicejobs.com and nursingjobfinder.com.
• OLX – classifieds partner for social networks like Friendster and many others worldwide.
• JobThread – jobs partner for 300 high-traffic web sites and blogs.
• Impulse Corp – jobs partner for bored.com, findjobs.com, careerramblings.com.
• Cinnamon Entertainment Group – jobs partner for mobilewirelessjobs.com, jobfish.com and others.

The pricing for the affiliate network is an additional $2 per position/candidate or $25/month for unlimited positions. Its not clear what percentage of revenue is shared with the affiliate network partner web sites.

Gumiyo, a leading provider of classified information to mobile devices, has partnered with Autobase, a leading data collection company in the US. In the US most dealers use a data collection company to capture information related to the vehicle and produce state required window stickers. Generally the data collection companies then publish the vehicle information in a variety of media locations depending on the dealers requirements.

Increasing the dealer’s own webpage is becoming one of the best locations to promote vehicles and the Gumiyo solution allows the dealer to have additional communication tools with the consumer. For example Gumiyo can provide the ability to text message on vehicles or view classifieds on the smaller screens available on mobile devices. Its not clear how well the Gumiyo solution will work with third-party media which may not fully support some of the Gumiyo functionality.

In addition to providing a classified republishing system, Edgeio, has announced that they will provide a paid content distribution system through their transaction classified system.  The system will provide the ability for anyone with an article, video, or music the ability to sell it through their classified network.  It would appear they are extending their classified system into the digital product world,  which is a different strategy from traditional classifieds which often avoid digital products and in some cases even ban them for their media.  Often the challenge with digital products is the dispute resolution process since there is no physical product and transactions can cross multiple regions it becomes very challenging.

The new system provides content providers with access to a variety of web sites that want to publish their content.  Content providers can upload individual files or use the Edgeio bulk uploader system to upload their entire inventory.

All transactions through the system are 3-way, with Edgeio, the content provider, and the web site all sharing in the transaction fee.  The content provider can choose the price for their content and the split with the web sites, which act as an affiliate sales channel.

Edgeio will continue to work with web sites who want to publish content as both a source of revenue and a way to attract customers.   Web sites will have the option to choose the types of content they want on their web site, depending on the share of revenue provided and the type of content being published.  The service launched at the Gnomedex conference and is already publishing ebooks through the Gnomedex web site.  n

LiveDeal.com ( previously YP Corp ) has launched a rating service for its online business listings. LiveDeal.com currently has over 13.5M local business listings which can now be ranked by users. Its not clear at this point if the online ratings will be included in the printed directories.

The “Rate This Store” feature is very easy to use can allows consumers to rank users between 1-5 and include a personal comment about their experience with the vendor. Ratings have become extremely popular with consumers of the last few years but are still a source of abuse between vendors. For example there is very little to prevent competitive vendors from rating their competition negatively and soliciting aid from friends/family. This sort of abuse can be very detrimental to the advertising experience and its often very difficult to detect.

Buy.com has launched a Facebook application to promote it classified sales service.  Buy.com generally competes with ebay for both auction and classified sales but offers a flat rate comission regardless of the size of the purchase.   The new application aims to connect buyer and sell inside the Facebook community.  The Garage Sale application lets users display items they have for sale on their profile pages and promote that they have items for sale to friends they think might be interested.

Facebook already has a classified application called Market Place, that is installed by default for all users.  The Buy.com Garage Sale will need to be installed by users to use the service but aims to differentiate from the Market Place application by providing a payment system inside of the Facebook environment.  Buyers will be able to purchase immediately through the system and the seller will his proceeds minus a 5% cut from Buy.com.

Its an interesting business model but its not clear how necessary or relevant a payment system will be for Facebook based classified sales.  In most cases its expected that Facebook classified sales will be local and with goods being exchanged for cash.   Buy.com is probably not the last service to enter into the extremely popular Facebook platform.

PressMediaWire.com, a leading provider of business press releases, blogs and event promotion has launched a business directory service.  The service is currently accepting business listings and waiving the initial listing fee.  Basic business listings are free and must meet the following criteria:

• Must be an English language website or English translation available.
• Must be well designed and maintained. Sites with broken links and missing images will not qualify.
• Sites must have their own domain.
• Titles and descriptions can only have capital letters only at the beginning of the words. TOP LEVEL CATEGORIES REQUIRE FEATURED LISTINGS. We reserve the right to move non-featured listings where we deem appropriate.
• Symbols and numbers are not accepted at the beginning of the title unless your URL starts with a number.
• Submit only top-level domains. Do not submit individual pages of the website or sub-domains.
• Submit to only one category.
• Spamming is not tolerated and will result in your site being banned from our directory.
• Sites with only banners and or excessive pop ups/under will not be accepted.
• Your site includes any type of pornographic materials, hate materials, adult materials, racial materials, or unlawful practice.

Premium listings are also available for $19.95/month and include priority listing in display and a basic PR package. By combining the directory listing with basic PR services PressmediaWire.com is providing an excellent service to differentiate themselves from more traditional directory advertising providers.  

After speculation for months about how free classified sites could get incent people to away from other free classified sites.  Listasaurus.com has announced that they will actually pay people to advertise.   The site also claims as one of its goals to provide less spam and fraudulent ads that other free classified sites.  This seems like an impossible business model maintain and in my opinion will actually create more spam than less.  We’d love to hear from anyone does actually get paid by listasaurus.com.

Yourlist.com has launched a free classified site which seems to be targeted at Craigslist.  The site features free listings for most categories except for employment which carry a $15 charge.  The site is focused on providing a safe and secure site for buyers and sellers to meet.  This seems to be tried to make this process as easy as possible at a very price point.  Users can search for classified listings in their city or with a radius of their zip code.  The site is currently only available in the US and most major cities.  There is currenty very little content and with all other free classified sites available I think they will have a hard time building up content.  To help with build content the site is giving away an Apple iPhone monthly through a random draw of advertisers.