Up here, "north of the border" in Canada, Kijiji has cut a swath through Craigslist use. I rarely hear Craigslist anymore but Kijiji is almost ubiquitous for online classifieds, especially in my non-tech friends. "Throw it on Kijiji"
I don't know why it took off so strongly here in Canada but the speed at which it did surprised even me. I have also been surprised it hasn't done the same in the US since it's not that culturally different when it comes to online classifieds.
Depends where you are. Vancouver and Toronto Craigslist activity is very strong in the "For Sale" categories with many thousands of new postings every day. Maritimes, Quebec and some western cities are quite desolate, except for ticket-selling bots it seems.
I agree it really depends on where you are. Craigslist was slow to expand past the major Canadian cities, so in the smaller cities UsedEverywhere or Kijiji were first and remain more popular.
Agreed. I used to live in Victoria, on Vancouver Island, and http://www.usedvictoria.com was probably mentioned just as much as Craigslist. Goes to prove that local services can sometimes make a dent- not a significant one, but I'm sure someone is making a living out of it.
Living in Vancouver, I disagree. Craigslist is still the main buy/sell website here. I've tried to use Kijiji a couple of times with the same results as the original poster - not much response.
Here in Norway, Finn.no[1] is totally dominating the classified market (and other things like travel aggregation).
They're quite innovative and open actually. They actively ask for feedback, release beta applications and statistics, and release new and useful features all the time. Most people, geeks included, actually likes them.
Norwegians (and other Europeans) usually envy the US for being the first to get a lot of web services (we still can't rent movies online like Netflix), but Craiglist is one of the few things I don't exactly envy you for. Pity would probably be a better description.
Here in the states, there are also the realty-related megasites like:
- realtor.com
- zillow.com
- trulia.com
Realtor.com is a giant commercial realty sales site that just happens to list rentals. The interfaces to the above sites aren't utterly terrible, but they're certainly not great (i.e., not lightning fast, crowded with extraneous material, etc.).
The rental listings still pale in comparison to CL, but they've got much bigger pots on the stove. Who knows, one day they may decide to split off a sub-site to handle traditional residential, commercial, short-term and non-traditional rental properties.
Kijiji was the would-be Craigslist killer that eBay built internally after acquiring a minority share of Craigslist itself, and then finding out that Jim and Craig were not interested in the full merger that eBay had expected would follow in due course. (From which much legal wackiness ensued, as Craigslist tried to limit eBay's access to their internal data once it became clear that they would be competing. This is probably still ongoing.)
Looks like they've dropped the separate branding, at least in the US.
I don't know why it took off so strongly here in Canada but the speed at which it did surprised even me. I have also been surprised it hasn't done the same in the US since it's not that culturally different when it comes to online classifieds.
Edit: http://ontario.kijiji.ca/