eBay’s Vertical Classified Strategy

The WSJ reports that eBay has quietly opened its classifieds site, Kijiji (what a lousy name!) to the US audience, positioned to compete against the wildly popular Craigslist, in which it owns a 25% stake.

One wonders why eBay doesn’t just buy Craigslist; the answer to that question is that Craigslist’s founder, Craig Newmark, has no desire to sell.

Craigslist is a significant player in several online vertical classifieds: jobs, real estate, personals and community services.
eBay already owns an apartment rental site, Rent.com, giving it a position in the online real estate vertical. In Jobs, it could get in easily by acquiring Monster.

It appears to me that it is too late in the game for this organic effort on eBay’s part. The stock has been a non-performer for a while, and the company wasted a lot of money on a pointless Skype acquisition. It would be better off with a vertical search and vertical portal roll-up strategy now, because they need to speed things up.