Author: 
Paul Rapa
Publication: 
SeekingAlpha
Publication Date: 
24-Feb-2008

With each passing month, eBay's Kijiji service continues to gain users at an unprecedented rate. Kijiji New York alone has over 22,000 ads. What is impressive is that Kijiji's ads last one week and there is a limit of 25 ads per person. Thus, the majority of ads are not from spammers. Craigslist, possibly feeling the heat, has extended their ads to last 30 plus days. Additionally Craigslist is so cluttered that one gets lost visiting the site.

Many people still do not even know that Kijiji exists as advertising has been limited. However, Kijiji's clean interface and easy to use map make it a prime favorite to overtake Craigslist in the not too distant future. Now if only eBay can make money from the site. Note to eBay: Please at least start putting some display advertising on the site. If you wait too long, there will be too many users and we will start hearing the crying whining pains of "We will boycott Kijiji if ads appear." eBay is allocating a lot of resources to Kijiji. One can also say that eBay's 25% investment in Kijiji was used to learn the classified trade. Thus Ebay needs to monetize the site and soon.

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