Is there room for another classified ads website?
It would appear that Craigslist has this market on lock down. Craigslist is almost the term people use when referencing online classified ads in general - like Kleenex.
With all the simplicities of Craigslist though, it seems like it could be updated and done better. I know 'better' is subjective, but a lot of newer technologies have come out since Craigslist was initially released. The concept could perhaps be modernized a bit.
Do you think there's room in the market for another Craigslist? What kind of things could make classified ads better?
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They might have more 'stuff' on Craigslist but I'm really turned off by the spam and the old feel of the site. Their neglect for a great UI and consumer experience lost them a user.
I am by no means a hardcore classifieds user, but I would really like a site that had a much more powerful search, better spam filtering and a way to clean out expired items more quickly.
Now with the ease of content discovery the market is fragmenting into specialist sites, look at the profitable areas of Cragislist: housing, cars, dating. They all have specialist sites which are doing better than Craigslist, by taking the most profitable chunks of the market niche competitors are able to spend more per user in marketing and thus beat Craigslist.
In ten years time Craigslist is just going to be left with the least profitable classified ads. You have to ask yourself is that what you want to be competing for ?
Your best bet would probably to concentrate on a particular niche that you want to steal away from Craigslist (local sales, etc.) and figure out the problems people face in that niche and use that to break into the market, rather than trying to compete with Craigslist across the board in what is already a dying model.
The things that I am focusing on are
a) realtime b) not having to provide phone number c) valid listings (e.g.: listing disappears once item is gone)
That's food for thought. I mentioned New Zealand, so perhaps you can find a locality where a Craigslist-type website would pay off well.
(to search, type 'home' then find 'IT/Computer' in the classification drop down)
Generally I find it has a better range of casual/part-time or even full-time than Seek/TradeMe.