If you build it, will they come? The old new-economy question seems to be
asked again by European newspapers seeing their traditional classified model
threatened. This week saw the launch of two new free-ad classified sites
owned by German publishing houses: Kalaydo.de and heisetreff.de.
Meanwhile markt.de (launched in September 2005 by a
group of other German newspaper publishers) announced a partnership with lycos.de in order to expand its traffic; wikibay.de (launched in November 2005 by
another group of newspaper publishers) got in trouble with eBay and therefore
changed its name to wikibuy.de; and willhaben.at was launched in Austria by
Styria Medien AG in cooperation with the Norwegian media company Schibsted. …
A real free-ad marketplace mania.