First off. Lets be clear. We have to kill the phrase 'online classifieds'. At best, it has the weary note of strained metaphors like moving staircases and horseless carriages. At worst, its symptomatic of a dated way of thinking about the world. These days, winning in classifieds really means winning in markets. And that, dear readers, is a much tougher job.
What makes a good market? Plenty of buyers and sellers certainly. But with competition in the web classifieds space pushing the value of all listings to zero, capturing critical mass through disruptive pricing tactics will no longer work. Market leadership now depends on moving past the ‘newspaper ads on the web’ model to creating true value exchanges.
The rumour mill has it that Google is about to enter the fray with a classified listings product. The listings model, as popularised by Craigslist has been a persistent thorn in the side of both newspaper groups and eBay, which has of late been aggressively acquiring stakes in free classified players.
For Google, a key opportunity area is recruitment where vertical search engines such as SimplyHired are starting to make traction with their aggregated job listings combined with local search and social network integration. In a sense, Google has always been in the listings game. Adwords is nothing more than a paid listings directory redux.
This time round, the challenge will be offering job candidates and recruiters a mediated search experience that not only effectively matches market participants, but finds a clever way to price the value of the connection. Traditional job boards do a poor job of reflecting the underlying worth of market scarcity. If the market is running hot for Java programmers, it should cost more to advertise to them. Similarly, if corporate lawyers are a dime a dozen, you should be able to purchase a performance based campaign for those social undesirebles at a few cents a click.
Now, thats what I call natural justice.
As the old saying goes, people pretend to work, when employers pretend to pay them. The good news is that structural changes in the recruitment industry are making it easier for candidates to find themselves a better job. But with the space becoming increasingly crowded with managed service providers, online job boards, social networking sites as well as the traditional band of recruitment industry suspects – the real question may be who really gets to make the money, and who has to just act like they do.
In case you missed it, Kijiji is 'Swahili' for village. As it turns out, it is also 'eBay' for cloning Craigslist. Only month's after acquiring a stake in the infamous online classifieds site, eBay has launched an international network of local community trading boards which replace their auction gavel with free listings.
