From the category archives:

Classifieds

No Resolution To Craigslist Vs. eBay Case?

by Jason Wilk on January 3, 2009

Remember when Craigslist sued eBay? The following was back on May 13, 2008 of which there was no public resolution. What really happened?

We filed a complaint in California today, charging eBay with unlawful and unfair competition, misappropriation of proprietary information, deceptive passing-off, business interference, false advertising, phishing attacks, free-riding, trademark infringement, trademark dilution, and breaches of fiduciary duty.We respectfully ask the Superior Court in San Francisco to enjoin this conduct and order eBay to (1) make full restitution to craigslist, (2) disgorge their related profits (3) restore to craigslist all shares of the company acquired by means of, or for the purpose of unfair competition, and (4) pay punitive damages for their malicious behavior. PDF here.

by Jason Wilk on December 2, 2008

Months ago, Facebook distributed a request-for-proposal to a slew of classified sites earlier this year to redo and rebrand the Facebook Marketplace (see Craigslist)
Speculation was that Oodle, the classifieds provider that powers Wal-Mart had the job. Well, today the speculation comes true.
The marketplace needs serious help. In Silicon Valley, New York City and San Francisco combined, the amount of new listings to the Facebook Marketplace was less than 30 yesterday!
Classified listings is a business that never needed to make it out of the web 1.0 era. Craigslist is simple, efficient, and everything you need to find/buy things or services. Adding social features around it just doesn’t make sense. Most people agree that they’d rather not know the person they are buying something from as then it brings some sort of history with it and never feels like ‘your own’.
Chegg was first on the scene in 2005 to launch a mildly successful social classifieds site (for college students) up until Facebook decided to take them on. Now Chegg is a successful textbook rental company making serious dollars. Maybe Facebook should have copied that model instead of trying to kick the dead horse back to life (i’m kidding, but seriously social classifieds wil never kill Craigslist)
It will be interesting to see what Oodle can do with the classifieds business for Facebook. They certainly have the audience, now they need to engage. My thoughts are that their audience doesn’t care. TC

by Jason Wilk on November 13, 2008

Workstir is looking to improve upon Craiglists’ service section by adding user-generated reviews and rankings to the service providers.
Mainly focused around home repair, cleaning, and child care (sorry, no erotic), it will have to compete with recently troubled Angie’s List and new to the scene MyJambi

by Jason Wilk on November 6, 2008

Craigslist said Thursday that it had reached an agreement with 40 state attorneys general and agreed to tame its “erotic services” listings that has been dominated by prostitution.
To combat the problem, Craigslist will charge erotic services vendors a small fee for each ad of around $5 to $10.
Charging the credit card will help to confirm identity and scare away spammers who are looking to, well, whore themselves out.
Craig will donate the money to charities, including those that combat child exploitation and human trafficking.