RefreshClassifieds

Brandan Connell, the owner of Rankrover.com, has launched a new human edited directory to compete with DMOZ.   The new directory site is called Nicadema and features the ability accept reciprocal links and paid options.   Reciprocal links are free and paid options start at $9 and go to $21 dollars for sponsored links.   All payments are accepted via Paypal.

DMOZ , the open directory project, contains about 4.6M sites, 70K editors and receives around 2M unique visitors daily.  The DMOZ has become very big and doesn’t currently allow for paid options to separate advertisers.

Techcrunch is reporting that OLX.com raised $13M from General Catalyst, Bessemer Venture Partners, Founders Fund, and DN Capital.  OLX.com aims to compete with Craigslist and other free classified sites but seems.
The most interesting aspect of the OLX business plan is perhaps their partnership to white label their site with Friendster.com, the social networking site.    Unlike the early Oodle partnership with Facebook, the Friendster relationship seems to provide OLX as the exclusive classified site.

OLX.com is also very popular outside of the US and a great web experience for users.    The sites traffic has been relatively flat over the last year and it would appear that a growth strategy for North America is required.

Overall its great to see a Classified sites still getting funding with Craigslist and Kijiji competing so actively.

Homenet Inc and Gumiyo have announced a partnership to leverage the Gumiyo’s mobile platform with the Homenet dealer inventory management tools.  The Homenet Inventory Online service is used by over 12,000 dealers primarily in the US and processes 2.5 million vehicles daily.

A key requirement in the US automotive industry are window stickers which are required in most states and need to be very accurate.  As a result most dealers outsource the inventory management process to third-parties, like Homenet.

Gumiyo provides the ability to view classified information on mobile devices.  Gumiyo users can view small brochures with the classified listings.  Gumiyo can support a variety of classified services but the Homenet service would be focused on the Automotive business.

This looks like a great relationship for both companies, the dealers they service and ultimately classified users.  With increasing pressure from free classified provides its good to see innovative approaches and partnerships.

Autotrader.ca has launched a New Car search and Autotrader New Car publication. Autotrader.ca is the number one automotive site in Canada with 2 million unique monthly visitors and it makes sense that they would expand into the New Car category. The Autotrader New Car magazine will be distributed in Toronto, Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver, and Montreal with 230,000 copies in circulation.

Autotrader Canada has traditionally been a used car source and the brand took over the automotive classified advertising space in many Canadian markets. Newspapers and other media outlets have been forced focus on New Car advertising revenue, and done fairly well off the automotive manufactures.

The Autotrader.ca New Car offering appears to be positioned at giving automotive manufactures more choice with regards to advising. Currently the New Car search is separated from Used Cars but its not clear that consumers make a hard distinction between New and Used when they start searching. In most cases the price point of new cars puts them out of reach but with some incentive programs the cost for a new car is very close. In the future it new and used advertising may share more of the media outlets.

Disclosure: Colin Smillie worked with Trader Corporation in 2007, which owns Autotrader.ca.