6 ms·

Kijiji, a Flop in the U.S., Rules Online Classifieds in Canada

46 points by carlchenet 11y ago

jeremy_wiebe 11y ago
Interesting. I live in BC and Kijiji definitely isn't as dominant as Craigslist here. It's common to find jobs, second hand goods, and cars on Craigslist. I haven't heard anyone refer to Kijiji for anything here. Quite different from ON where Kijiji does seem to have the dominance that the article referred to.
- chrisfosterelli 11y ago
  Interesting, where in BC? I also live in BC (Okanagan), and _everything_ is Kijiji. I'm not sure I've opened Craigslist in years.
- notatoad 11y ago
  I'm assuming by BC you mean Vancouver? There's a few Canadian cities that Craigslist opened up sections for back when Craigslist was new and getting lots of media coverage, and Craigslist continues to do well there. But kijiji allowed posts from anywhere at the same time as Craigslist was restricted to a few cities, so kijiji dominates almost everywhere.
  - jeremy_wiebe 11y ago
    You're right. I was overly broad with my BC comment. I live in Vancouver.
- derekja 11y ago
  Victoria, BC is mostly usedvictoria dominated, but a minority use craigslist and it actually seems to have fewer flakes on it. Kijiji is a ghost town here.
mediazazen 11y ago
Kijiji changed its name to "Kleinanzeigen" here in Germany few years ago, but its quite popular compared to craigslist etc.
- slowmotiony 11y ago
  And rightfully so, "Kijiji" is a terrible name.
- Udo_Schmitz 11y ago
  To be exact: eBay Kleinanzeigen with the domain kleinanzeigen.ebay.de
cdnsteve 11y ago
I love Kijiji. It's extremely popular in Ontario. Everyone I know uses it for buying and selling anything, myself included. It's free, simple to use, and there is a huge amount of traffic on the site so you can sell things quickly. People use to use AutoTrader but no one I know uses it anymore. They seem to have lost their market share to Kijiji long ago.
- nfoz 11y ago
  It was one of the first things I missed when I moved to NYC. Kijiji is so much better than craigslist.
  - unseraphim 11y ago
    No it isn't. There's no API and the IOS app is iPhone native, runs in emulation on the iPad. No mapping capability and scarce development and support of third-party solutions due to the limited market. Kijiji is loaded with intrusive ads and spammed by retail stores with no way to filter. The interface is awful, with tiny thumbnails and no compensation for vision problems. Classic Beta/VHS story. Kijiji has market share in Canada as its only advantage. My fellow Canadians are ignorant idiots for using an inferior product.
  - barbs 11y ago
    unseraphim: you're hellbanned. And looking at your past posts, it's probably a good thing.
barbs 11y ago
I think classifieds sites tend to have this phenomenon of being localised to regions simply because, by nature, its usefulness derives from finding people and services in your physical area. And much like social networks, the more people use it, the more useful it is. In Australia, and I think Britain, most people use Gumtree. And in New Zealand they use a similar site called TradeMe
- ska 11y ago
  I think this is the strongest factor. Once you have a critical mass locally, it's pretty hard to shift the user base - it would need a compelling reason, and you aren't going to get that from minor differences in UX.
- lun4r 11y ago
  Gumtree is also part of eBay Classifieds Group.
bryanlarsen 11y ago
In Ottawa, kijiji appears to run second to usedottawa.com, but both get good traffic. Craigslist is a ghost town.
- r0ssar00 11y ago
  I wish craigslist were more popular here (ottawa); I find kijiji's interface to be too noisy and does some crappy things (eg. Middle-clicking opens the ad in both the current tab and a new tab, totally useless). Also, while I understand the need to make a profit off the average user, kijiji seems to be taking the nickle-and-dime route which is annoying and annoying people into paying likely just incentivises them to try elsewhere first (haven't done the research on that but I'm pretty sure it applies to a statistically significant number of people).
- jagger27 11y ago
  Maybe two years ago, but not today. Kijiji has 43,000 listings in the automotive section but usedottawa only has 3,200. Compare usedottawa's 27,000 ads under "Latest" to Kijiji's 197,000 under "Buy & Sell" (does not include autos). It's fair to say that Kijiji has won.
kitcar 11y ago
I believe the main reason for Kijijis success in Canada is in its early years Kijiji canada ran massive PPC arbitrage campaigns - buying clicks for pennies from Google and reselling to unsophisticated Canadian media buyers for a significant markup. This enabled Kijiji Canada to continually invest massively into audience acquisition in Canada for many years, and as marketplace value is driven by scale, enabled them to build up the leadership position they have today.
- pbreit 11y ago
  That doesn't square up with the article or anything I've heard about Kijiji's success in Canada. Can you point to anything supporting the assertions?
  - kitcar 11y ago
    Mostly conversations with Kijiji Canada employees between 2008-2010. I vaguely remember them mentioning the recruitment of a "super affiliate" from Montreal to manage their PPC program as being a key event in their success in Canada.
- jessriedel 11y ago
  > This enabled Kijiji Canada to continually invest massively into audience acquisition Could you elaborate on how they did this?
- spada 11y ago
  can you expand on this? i'm curious how the process worked given that arbitrage usually doesn't work that way.
osipovas 11y ago
Here in Alberta Kijiji is King. I remember going to the US and telling my boss that we should look for used stuff of Kijiji. All I got was a blank stare. On a sidenote, Kijiji should make their Android app better.
hackerboos 11y ago
Just like here in the UK. Gumtree (also owned by eBay) dominates over Craigslist.
alexk7 11y ago
In live in Quebec City. I used Kijiji to sell my car a few years ago and it still is the site I use to sell stuff. Reading this article made me go to Craigslist to see if it was any better now. Nope. I needed to click a dozen times to get to the french version for Quebec City. Nobody there. No photos in the lists? Move on. Before that, I was literally thinking "CraigsList still exists?". I guess so, my Mac autocorrects CraigsList but does not have Kijiji in its dictionary... :)
Lorenzo45 11y ago
Vancouver must be one of the exceptions to this. I'm from Winnipeg, which uses only Kijiji, and recently moved to Vancouver. When I was looking for an apartment, I tried Kijiji and didn't find much at all, after talking to some people I know from Vancouver, they told me to try CraigsList and that's where all the posts were. I actually prefer the cleaner interface though, Kijiji is quite cluttered in comparison.

46 points by carlchenet 11y ago

Interesting. I live in BC and Kijiji definitely isn't as dominant as Craigslist here. It's common to find jobs, second hand goods, and cars on Craigslist. I haven't heard anyone refer to Kijiji for anything here. Quite different from ON where Kijiji does seem to have the dominance that the article referred to.

chrisfosterelli 11y ago
Interesting, where in BC? I also live in BC (Okanagan), and _everything_ is Kijiji. I'm not sure I've opened Craigslist in years.
notatoad 11y ago
I'm assuming by BC you mean Vancouver? There's a few Canadian cities that Craigslist opened up sections for back when Craigslist was new and getting lots of media coverage, and Craigslist continues to do well there. But kijiji allowed posts from anywhere at the same time as Craigslist was restricted to a few cities, so kijiji dominates almost everywhere.
- jeremy_wiebe 11y ago
  You're right. I was overly broad with my BC comment. I live in Vancouver.
derekja 11y ago
Victoria, BC is mostly usedvictoria dominated, but a minority use craigslist and it actually seems to have fewer flakes on it. Kijiji is a ghost town here.

mediazazen 11y ago

Kijiji changed its name to "Kleinanzeigen" here in Germany few years ago, but its quite popular compared to craigslist etc.

slowmotiony 11y ago
And rightfully so, "Kijiji" is a terrible name.
Udo_Schmitz 11y ago
To be exact: eBay Kleinanzeigen with the domain kleinanzeigen.ebay.de

cdnsteve 11y ago

I love Kijiji. It's extremely popular in Ontario. Everyone I know uses it for buying and selling anything, myself included. It's free, simple to use, and there is a huge amount of traffic on the site so you can sell things quickly. People use to use AutoTrader but no one I know uses it anymore. They seem to have lost their market share to Kijiji long ago.

nfoz 11y ago
It was one of the first things I missed when I moved to NYC. Kijiji is so much better than craigslist.
- unseraphim 11y ago
  No it isn't. There's no API and the IOS app is iPhone native, runs in emulation on the iPad. No mapping capability and scarce development and support of third-party solutions due to the limited market. Kijiji is loaded with intrusive ads and spammed by retail stores with no way to filter. The interface is awful, with tiny thumbnails and no compensation for vision problems. Classic Beta/VHS story. Kijiji has market share in Canada as its only advantage. My fellow Canadians are ignorant idiots for using an inferior product.
- barbs 11y ago
  unseraphim: you're hellbanned. And looking at your past posts, it's probably a good thing.

barbs 11y ago

I think classifieds sites tend to have this phenomenon of being localised to regions simply because, by nature, its usefulness derives from finding people and services in your physical area. And much like social networks, the more people use it, the more useful it is. In Australia, and I think Britain, most people use Gumtree. And in New Zealand they use a similar site called TradeMe

ska 11y ago
I think this is the strongest factor. Once you have a critical mass locally, it's pretty hard to shift the user base - it would need a compelling reason, and you aren't going to get that from minor differences in UX.
lun4r 11y ago
Gumtree is also part of eBay Classifieds Group.

bryanlarsen 11y ago

In Ottawa, kijiji appears to run second to usedottawa.com, but both get good traffic. Craigslist is a ghost town.

r0ssar00 11y ago
I wish craigslist were more popular here (ottawa); I find kijiji's interface to be too noisy and does some crappy things (eg. Middle-clicking opens the ad in both the current tab and a new tab, totally useless). Also, while I understand the need to make a profit off the average user, kijiji seems to be taking the nickle-and-dime route which is annoying and annoying people into paying likely just incentivises them to try elsewhere first (haven't done the research on that but I'm pretty sure it applies to a statistically significant number of people).
jagger27 11y ago
Maybe two years ago, but not today. Kijiji has 43,000 listings in the automotive section but usedottawa only has 3,200. Compare usedottawa's 27,000 ads under "Latest" to Kijiji's 197,000 under "Buy & Sell" (does not include autos). It's fair to say that Kijiji has won.

kitcar 11y ago

I believe the main reason for Kijijis success in Canada is in its early years Kijiji canada ran massive PPC arbitrage campaigns - buying clicks for pennies from Google and reselling to unsophisticated Canadian media buyers for a significant markup. This enabled Kijiji Canada to continually invest massively into audience acquisition in Canada for many years, and as marketplace value is driven by scale, enabled them to build up the leadership position they have today.

pbreit 11y ago
That doesn't square up with the article or anything I've heard about Kijiji's success in Canada. Can you point to anything supporting the assertions?
- kitcar 11y ago
  Mostly conversations with Kijiji Canada employees between 2008-2010. I vaguely remember them mentioning the recruitment of a "super affiliate" from Montreal to manage their PPC program as being a key event in their success in Canada.
jessriedel 11y ago
> This enabled Kijiji Canada to continually invest massively into audience acquisition Could you elaborate on how they did this?
spada 11y ago
can you expand on this? i'm curious how the process worked given that arbitrage usually doesn't work that way.

osipovas 11y ago

Here in Alberta Kijiji is King. I remember going to the US and telling my boss that we should look for used stuff of Kijiji. All I got was a blank stare. On a sidenote, Kijiji should make their Android app better.

hackerboos 11y ago

Just like here in the UK. Gumtree (also owned by eBay) dominates over Craigslist.

alexk7 11y ago

In live in Quebec City. I used Kijiji to sell my car a few years ago and it still is the site I use to sell stuff. Reading this article made me go to Craigslist to see if it was any better now. Nope. I needed to click a dozen times to get to the french version for Quebec City. Nobody there. No photos in the lists? Move on. Before that, I was literally thinking "CraigsList still exists?". I guess so, my Mac autocorrects CraigsList but does not have Kijiji in its dictionary... :)

Lorenzo45 11y ago

Vancouver must be one of the exceptions to this. I'm from Winnipeg, which uses only Kijiji, and recently moved to Vancouver. When I was looking for an apartment, I tried Kijiji and didn't find much at all, after talking to some people I know from Vancouver, they told me to try CraigsList and that's where all the posts were. I actually prefer the cleaner interface though, Kijiji is quite cluttered in comparison.