Chegg

• 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

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