New classified ads site from eBay
10 March 2005
Online auction house eBay has launched a series of classified advertising websites in Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy and Japan.
The new sites are under the Kijiji brand, which means "village" in Swahili
eBay has also recently acquired stakes in a number of classified sites in the United States and abroad.
The company took a 25 per cent stake in San Francisco-based Craigslist.org, a free-listings site for people selling items, seeking roommates or wanting to meet up. Craigslist charges employers for help-wanted listings.
In November, the site bought Marktplaats.nl, the biggest Dutch classified ad website, for about $290 million in cash, while in February, it completed the acquisition of US apartment and rental housing website Rent.com for about $415 million. EBay's $152 million acquisition of Mobile.de, an online site for automobile ads in Germany, is set for the second quarter of this year.
The Kijiji sites are available now in more than 50 cities and help people in a city meet, find information and trade ideas and goods free of charge.
"We look at it as a long-term investment. We may decide to monetize some aspects of it down the road, but now there are no plans," said eBay spokesman Hani Durzy. He added that the company sees Craigslist as doing in the US what the Kijiji sites do elsewhere.
eBay has received criticism of late for the soaring cost of running businesses on the auction site and is under pressure to match its strong earnings growth of recent years. The firm said the launch of Kijiji would not have a material impact on 2005 revenues.
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