MySpace Classifieds Discovered
Battelle points to a fantastic Fortune article on Craigslist, and mentions MySpace classifieds.

I've been using MySpace for about a year and had not heard of their classifieds. A bit of digging (clicking on the classifieds link) revealed a Raleigh page that looks pretty much exactly like Craigslist. Except that there are far fewer listings. OK, basically there are none - only 2 listings for Raleigh apartments, while Craigslist has 18 for December 5th alone.

A commenter on Battelle's post noted that "MySpace has had classifieds for a long time, well before Murdoch got ahold of it."

What struck me though is that I'd be far more willing to buy stuff from my network of friends on MySpace than places like eBay (where I'm not a buyer/user at all) or Craigslist. Though I did sell my 89 Honda Accord on Craigslist and I plan to do the lionshare of apartment hunting there if the leads from my friends fall through.

I don't think that MySpace or even Fremont will be able cut that much into the astounding amount of traffic that Craigslist gets: "Ten million Craigslist users click on an estimated 6.5 million classified postings each month at 190 local sites in 35 countries, generating three billion page views."

Still, MySpace, why am I not using your classifieds? Why are they not more integrated into the places I go to regularly on your site?
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |