Having worked in this space, I can tell you there’s no putting that genie back in that bottle. Classifieds were great for the verticals that made money because

Having worked in this space, I can tell you there’s no putting that genie back in that bottle. Classifieds were great for the verticals that made money because it was the best distribution model given the economics pre internet. Now the marginal cost of disseminating classifieds type information is so close to zero that there will always be competition driving the profit margins down, on a per vertical basis. Just let that sink in. That means that there is no defensive moat on general classifieds, because someone can swoop in and make one vertical so compelling that they can start to generate network effects that can be hard to counter.