RefreshClassifieds

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.

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.

Trader Corporation, owner of the Autotrader brand in Canada, has announced an exclusive partnership with the Canadian International Autoshow.  The Canadian International Autoshow is held annually in Toronto and the largest Canadian Automotive show.

Typically attendees of the Autoshow are consumer that are looking for a new automobile.  Attendence for the week long event typically exceeds 300,000 and the show occupies 800,000 squarefeet in the convention center and the skydome.

This looks like a good partnership for both parties as Autotrader seeks to reach customer looking for an automobile and encourage them to consider a used vehicle as part of their search.  The Autoshow typically benefits from increased exposure on the Autotrader publications and Autotrader.ca.

The relationship seems to be focused exclusively on the Toronto show.  There is no mention of the regional shows in other Canadian markets.

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.

According to the Newspaper Association of America (NAA), the average number of unique monthly visitors (UMV’s) to newspaper websites grew by more than 3.6 million in 2007, making it a record year for the industry. The 2007 UMV figure is an increase of more than 6% over 2006 numbers.

Monthly unique visitors to newspaper websites averaged 62.8 million in Q4’ of 2007 and it was the largest quarter reported, since the NAA began tracking online usage in 2004.

Additional findings in the Nielsen Online report created for the NAA state that:

• Heading into the holiday season, newspaper websites experienced a record in October 2007. More than 63.2 million people visited newspaper websites that month, more than any month on record – and an 8% increase from the same period a year ago
• For the year’s fourth quarter, 39% of all active Web users visited newspaper websites, with visits averaging 44 minutes a month
• In the fourth quarter, users generated more than three billion page impressions on average, a 7.3% increase over the same period a year ago

The National Post released its new site design and the results are impressive. They have gone from the smaller text with gnawing prominent yellow, to larger images and lots of them, cleanly placed on the home page. The screen width in this newer sleeker post site has also grown, making the content images aesthetically pleasing. The site still, unfortunately, makes you scroll to infinity to get to the content placed at the bottom of the screen (all newspapers seem to be repeating this mistake). This just means that the Post could utilize links on their home page a little better.

What makes this re-vamp monumental for the National Post is that they have dropped the subscriber barriers. All of their content will be served, for free, online. The post will also look to include blogs for a more personal editorial take on news and current events.

HGTV recently launched a new site called FrontDoor that is built on the concept of real estate services and fueled by property listings.

FrontDoor will be going head to head with Realtor.com and Zillow and Realtor.com, according to HitWise, was the most trafficked real estate site in the US, week ending December 8^th. So, competition will be tough for FrontDoor.

The HGTV real estate site launched with 1.2 million listings – not bad. Those listings however, are the result of current relationships Scribs HGTV has with aggregators of real estate listings and are not the result of organic growth.

FrontDoor is hoping that it will appeal to home seekers through their intuitive home-buying guides that are developed for the individual. They go as far as to create home buying tips for women, tips for those buying real estate with friends, foreclosure counseling and much more. They have tried to outwardly cover the services the other sites have not.

Given the turbulent times the American real estate market is going through, it is risky to launch another properties site, but if FrontDoor can leverage their services as their niche, it just may work.

The New York Post, one of oldest and fastest growing daily Newspaper publishers in the US with 4 Million monthly users, has partnered with Oodle, one of the largest online classified sites.  Oodle.com works by aggregating classified listings from a variety of sources so that users can get access to them on a single site.

It would appear that Oodle will provide a custom built classified site for the general classified listings.  The NYpost.com will continue to maintain separate classified listings for Automotive, Jobs, Real Estate and Dating.

The choice to use Oodle as a provider is an odd for the NYpost.com because Oodle aggregates all classified listings and it may now be possible for competitive classified listings to appear.  All listings in the general classified section will be free but this approach may drive traffic to competitive sites.   Its not clear if the NYpost.com and Oodle will actively filter competitive listings to avoid this problem.