RefreshClassifieds

Skype is probably best known as the alternative communication platform that provides low-cost long distance from almost any computer on the planet.  When Skype was bought by Ebay in 2005 the plan for Skype in the Ebay empire was anything but clear.  In the last 2 years Skype has continued to improve its product line and launched Skype Find e earlier this year.  Skype Find allows user created vendor recommendations and content to be searchable from with Skype.   The connection to allow Skype users to connect directly with these businesses without using telephone numbers is fairly clear.

Skype has recently released support for third-party developers to integrate into Skype and Skype Find.  For directory companies this should be a great opportunity to get access to Skype technology and user base.  The ideal solution would be to connect the Skype Find service with a business directory and cross reference the listings.  If the user wants to use Skype to call the business, they can, or if the business is not Skype enabled, they can use Skype Out to make normal telephone calls.

Skype is a little slow of the mark with its API and a desire to support third-party developers but it is a fairly dominate leader in the instant messaging and voip space.  It will be interesting to see if any major directory provides take advantage of this new technology.

Metro France is reporting a new partnership with AnnouncesJaunes.fr to provide housing listings into the Metro print publications.   The housing listings will be featured in a new section with a combination of editorial and classified listings.  The new section will feature 50 classified listings of the over 400,000 listings currently available on AnnoncesJaunes.fr.

This would appear to be a good partnership for both parties with Metro is reporting that 25% of its readers intent to my a new home within the next 2 years.   Both parties bring substantial exposure for the advertisers with AnnoncesJaunes.fr receiving over 600,000 unique daily visitors and Metro Newspaper receiving 2,000,000 daily readers.

Media corp is reporting, through its ChannelNewsAsia, that Mocca.com is now the most popular classified site in Singapore. The site received 7 million page views and 13,000 listings last month. This is a growth of over 700% in the last 2 months and Hitwise is reporting that Mocca.com receives a third of all classified traffic in Singapore. The site has over 40,000 users with 90% of them being active.

The Mocca.com launch was supported with a series of TV commercials, like the ad here.

These tongue-in-cheek ads caught a lot of attention and have been distributed on Youtube.com. Its not clear if these were uploaded by Mocca.com or by fans of the ads. Mocca.com is still offering free ads and no information was disclosed on revenue so its hard to judge the financial success.Mocca.com also has lots of room to grow. Hitwise is reporting that the Singapore classified marketing is 0.2% of total internet traffic while in the US the classified market is 1.1% of total internet traffic. Its great to see Mocca.com attracting so much success but I’m sure this hasn’t gone unnoticed by competitors. It will be interesting to see if Mocca.com can maintain this level of growth.

In the last year we’ve seen a steady increase of both Radio and TV companies developing classified business off of their websites.  The cost of setting up a classified site are so low now that its very practical to setup the site directly, or create a partnership to provide content.   Even if the Classified section runs at a loss it helps drive traffic to other parts of the site which can be monetized with advertising.

The strategy involves the realization that classifieds on their own are a fairly cheap form of content which will attract a lot of users.  Most classified focused companies try to monetize the classified ads directly but Radio and TV companies can use the classified content to attract users and monetize other parts of the site.  Microsoft Live Expo, and Facebook are using essentially the same strategy to attract users to their sites.

With this sort of strategy becoming more popular we expect to see a lot of pricing pressure on classified only websites.  They will need to seriously consider their relationship with Radio and RV companies and how they want to develop the classified market.