eBay classifieds group

MICROSOFT tried. Google tried. Now it’s eBay’s turn to see if it can dethrone the Web’s most spectacularly successful underdog, Craigslist.

The Kijiji unit of eBay, a free classified ads service covering 13 countries online, was introduced in the United States in late June, and has already achieved modest success in some important markets, including New York. Its vice president and general manager, Jacob Aqraou, said it would market itself far more aggressively in 2008, and was further refining its service in hopes of putting a dent in Craigslist’s huge market-share lead.

“We’ve had half a person dedicated to the U.S. launch,” Mr. Aqraou said. “Next year, we’ll fully be up to the level of resources we should be putting against this.”

So far, Kijiji has done fairly well, climbing to second among all classifieds sites in the United States, with 1.8 million visitors in November, according to Nielsen Online. That is far behind Craigslist’s 20 million American visitors last month, and the average amount of time each Kijiji visitor spent — three minutes — suggests these visitors were still testing the waters. (Last month, the average Craigslist user spent more than an hour on the site.)

Like Craigslist, in which eBay has owned a 25 percent stake since 2004, Kijiji is subdivided into geographic categories, with 262 cities represented in the United States. In New York, the fastest-growing market for Kijiji, the site drew more than 18,000 ads last week, triple the number from July.