E-Media Tidbits

The newspaper industry in the U.S. has much to fret about with (mostly-)free-classified service Craigslist, which has removed millions of dollars annually from the classifieds revenue of papers in major metro markets that it's entered. (Make that tens of millions in the biggest markets.) To a lesser extent, Craigslist is a competitor to newspapers outside the U.S., since it's set up community sites in Canada, Europe, Australia/New Zealand, Asia, and Latin America. But those sites are new and most haven't seen wide usage yet. (The London Craigslist has only around 9,000 active listings today, vs. 243,000 on the San Francisco site.)

But now Craigslist has a competitor (sort of) operating similar community free-classifieds sites in cities around the world. Kijiji is a spin-off of online-auction giant eBay -- which just happens to own 25 percent of Craigslist. Kijiji represents eBay's first foray into local community and commerce.

As ClickZ's report on Kijiji explains, eBay has taken the Craigslist concept and cloned it for non-English-speaking local markets in 50 cities. Initially, ads on Kijiji will be free, though it might later follow Craig's model and charge for selected categories (say, jobs or some real estate).

Non-U.S. newspapers haven't faced the revenue pressure of Craigslist yet, but eBay's move with Kijiji could spread the classifieds angst worldwide.