The prevailing wisdom is that by bringing internationally-focused Kijiji to the US, eBay is taking on Craigslist.
That’s not the case. Craigslist is growing too fast to give a damn, frankly. And, as everyone has mentioned by now, eBay is 25% owner of Craigslist, they also have a board seat. While Craig Newmark might not say so, one day, he’ll get tired of being the CSR extraordinaire at Craigslist and want to sell. Trust me, it’s a matter of time. He won’t sell to MSFT, won’t sell to Yahoo!, won’t sell to Google, either. Not sure beneath the bravado Jim Buckmaster or Craig appreciated Google Base. What’s Google Base? Exactly.
You might have forgotten, but Craig has not forgiven.
He’ll sell one day, and it will be to eBay.
Today’s move is about creating a sense of competition between Craigslist when in fact it will further checkmate newspapers who seem to be increasingly clueless in the online classifieds space.
Newspapers should be taking this fight to the Web giants, but the mere fact that eBay can launch, in the phonetically-challenged American land, a site called Kijiji and become somewhat successful while newspapers continue to build tallen garden walls speaks volumes about where newspapers will end up if they keep these genius tactics up.
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