7 Comments Add your own

• 1. Don Day  |  May 12th, 2008 at 10:42 am

  They’re going to close down and put up a notice telling people to use their local newspaper instead.

• 2. Cory  |  May 12th, 2008 at 4:12 pm

  Ha, imagine if he did that, and you just watch how fast the newspapers ramp up their free classifieds to duplicate Craigslist and fill the gap. Cats out of the bag, and it’s not Craigslist’s fault. It was going to happen sooner or later, and newspapers failed to recognize it.

• 3. db  |  May 12th, 2008 at 9:22 pm

  I doubt that the papers would “fill the gap” if craigslist went away — after all, what’s to prevent them from doing it now? The problem isn’t that craigslist took away their business, it’s that they just don’t get it: they don’t understand the business model, they don’t understand the user experience, they don’t understand the internet in general.

  I can’t help but laugh at the “old media” complain that craigslist is killing them when they had (and to some degree STILL have) the edge in classified advertising. Beating craigslist would be simple for them even now: just copy what they’re doing and leverage their huge local promotional advantage.

• 4. Jade  |  May 13th, 2008 at 12:44 pm

  Craigslist provides an invaluable services for millions of people throught the world. Any corporation that challenges that is only doing so out of greed.

• 5. db  |  May 13th, 2008 at 1:02 pm

  Of course a corporation would challenge craigslist because of greed. Welcome to human nature.

  The real question is whether people cares. Sure, there are undoubtedly some who live and die by craigslist’s philosophical approach, but I would wager that most users don’t really care about the motivation behind the site — they just want somewhere simple and effective to post a free classified ad. Most newspapers refuse to offer one or more of those three things: simple, effective, free.

  What is so weird about the classifieds debate is that the newspapers are saying that they can’t compete with craigslist even though they’ve hardly tried. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy: craigslist will kill newspapers because they think it will.

• 6. Steve Floethe  |  May 13th, 2008 at 5:09 pm

  I’ve tried kijiji and it doesn’t work. No one response to my ad.

• 7. oakling  |  May 14th, 2008 at 12:14 pm

  They must be crazy. First of all, don’t launch a competing service, buy craigslist. Second of all, “Kijiji”? Who can even read that, much less spell or remember it?

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