I was having a chat with Marc and Ivan the other day about the state of classifieds and how people are changing the way they buy and sell stuff.
The interesting thing is that many of us are now buying and selling things on online classified sites like Craigslist Singapore, or in forums where people who share an interest congregate, like Togoparts for bicycles, and Clubsnap for photography.
I remember the old days, where you had to pay $27 for a three-line listing in the papers to sell things. Then Pacific Internet came along, as a pioneer in online classifieds and things changed dramatically (until they decided to charge for it, then people fled in droves to find alternatives). Since then, you can find online marketplaces for everything you need, from hobbies, to cars, to property, to jobs.
I suspect the move away from print classifieds is not just because of fees, or the ease of digital searches, but largely because of communities. You know that if you hang out at a site or forum where, for example, bike lovers congregate, you are more likely to get the right audience to sell your bicycle stuff to, and the right people to buy from too.
Newspapers do have their own online offerings with fancy features, but people continue to buy from their favourite forums or online-only sites. You can offer nifty features like uploading videos, photos and the like but you cannot duplicate the communities set up at those forums, which is what makes them powerful marketplaces.
Craig Newmark and Jim Buckmaster, the founder and CEO, respectively, of Craigslist, in an enlightening interview with
Freakonomics in the NYT talks about the threat sites like Craigslist pose to the newspaper business:
"We’ve been hearing increasingly from newspaper reporters who confide that they are only allowed to write negative stories about Craigslist these days, because we’re viewed as competition by their newspaper’s business managers."
Here are other stories about the impact Craigslist has on the traditional classifieds business:
CBS News: Winning The Battle For Classifieds
BBC: Craigslist's silent emergence
AP: Craigslist, Scourge of Newspaper Classifieds, Now Turns to Journalism
