RefreshClassifieds

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.

MediaCorp has launched its new classifieds site, Mocca.com, with a focus on providing more social interaction than is traditionally available for classified sites. The site will focus on the Asian marketing and specifically the Singapore market initially. Going well beyond basic classifieds the site allows users to upload multiple photos and even create virtual tours using video. Currently ads are free as an introductory offer, after the introductory offer Automotive, Real Estate and advertisers wanting to additional photos or rich media pay a fee of $15 per ad.

The site will feature additional social interaction capabilities shortly with the ability to discussion local real estate markets and other connections from MediaCorp partner sites. Mocca has secured commitments from several local real estate companies, including Global Real Estate, ERA Singapore and HSR Property Group.

MediaCorp is committed to growing the site to 50-60M page views over the next 2 years with full advertising support from its radio, print and television partners. The site has also launched with celebrity auctions from its popular media partners which proceedings going to local charities.

Autobytel has launched MyRide.com, a new Automotive with a more focused community experience. Car lovers can use video, audio, multiple pictures, message boards and even blogs to description their favourite cars. The site includes feature articles on popular automotive topics like Hot Rods and Classics but also includes more environmentally friendly topics like Driving Green.

By combining more social features into the site Autobytel hosts to create more of a meeting place for car enthusiasts. The site will be expanded shortly with feature car calendars and car club events. The site is built on the KickApps social media functionality.

The site still features new and use automotive classified ads and this is expected to be the primary revenue source. Its not clear how the site will connect the car fans with the classified listings though. Currently the functionality appears to be very separate so while the new features may drive traffic to the site it might not generate additional interest in the classified listings. The site is a good first attempt at bring social media to the Automotive classified space.

Darby Sieben recently wrote about , Canada’s largest directory launching the ability to save directory listings to a variety of social bookmarking sites. The most interesting component is the ability to post the listing in Facebook. Facebook in Canada is extremely popular and until recently Toronto, Canada was the largest geographic network in Facebook. Some estimates put the Facebook market penetration at 10% of the Canadian population so its no surprise to see large sites like Yellowpages.ca trying to get in on the action.

The Yellowpages.ca works fairly well but was very slow during our testing. Once you find a listing in Yellowpages.ca you can choose to save into most of the popular bookmarking sites or Facebook. The Facebook integration is in the form of a post which is fairly limited and doesn’t take advantage of any of the new features available in the new Facebook Developer Platform. The Yellowpages.ca branding is also very dominating, even including the TM where possible. It would have been good see this more subdued to encourage more use.

JobLoft has partnered with Nexopia to provide employment ads to the Nexopia.com social network. Nexopia bills themselves as Canada’s largest top socual community site. With the popularity of Facebook this might be the case anymore but the most interesting part of the strategy is the comment from the Jobloft blog:

“With the evolution of social community websites (MySpace, Friendster, Facebook, etc), we can now leverage the right demographic to fill Retail, Food Service and Hospitality positions faster”

I think this is a great example of a small startup being able to move faster than the competition. When I first saw the JobLoft demo at DemoCamp I was very impressed with how well they understood their target customer, retails advertisers, and their users. They brought together alot of fairly complex technology to create a very easy to use solution.

If JobLoft can continue to innovate and find its customers before the major media outls they will continue reap the rewards. I wouldn’t be surprised to see them continue to expand and take advantage of other social networks.