The constant battle between online auction giant eBay and Craigslist has been in the news for over a couple of years now. First, eBay acquired shares of Craigslist and then a year later they launched Kijiji. Kijiji, if you weren’t aware, is a classified site very similar to Craigslist. In 2007, eBay launched Kijiji in the United States and then filed laawsuits against Craigslist for pushing them out of shares. Subsequtenly, Craigslist filed a case against eBay and their attmept at a hostile take over of Craigslist itself.
Initially, Craigslist was more on the passive side of the battle while eBay continued to push further, even changing the name of Kijiji to eBayclassifieds.com with a mobile application. eBay wanted very badly to beat out Craigslist with their “better” online classified ads site and with their new ability of taking pictures and creating listings instantly through their mobile application. With the name change and better mobile application, they fully expected and hoped to beat Craigslist in the online classifieds war, but statistics for unique visitors proved otherwise. Craigslist continues to be on the 45-55M range of unique visitors while eBayclassifieds.com on the 0-1 million range. If eBay wants to beat Craigslist they really have to think of better ways to raise the competition, perhaps by reviving their good name first.
