Some Thoughts On The Online Classifieds Battle

Resident contributor, Ian Timothy picks up on the war going on amongst online classifieds sites and provides an analysis on why and how the proverbial success, Craigslist has succeeded and how one in Singapore might be able to do the same.

The readers of this site might have noticed Singapore’s online classified space heating up. There have been a spate of advertisements for two online classified sites: mocca.com and st701.com. Recently, Gwen had an interview with the founder of Inkiti.com a new entrant into this space When I think of online classifieds, the site that comes to mind is Craigslist, arguably the most successful online classified site, which has a Singapore site.

Although San Francisco and Singapore have similar population densities, based on the Wikipedia entries ‘List Of Cities By Population’ and ‘San Francisco’, it would probably be unfair to compare these two cities to understand the online classifieds space. Also the first city Craigslist started in was San Francisco in 1995 while Singapore’s version of the site started only in 2004. So comparing the usage of Craigslist for these two cities would possibly be unfair.

Let us then compare the Orange County site (which isn’t a city) which started at the same time with Singapore’s. Although its population density is smaller, Orange County has more postings. Here are some numbers which give some indication of how much more postings Orange County has.

For the jobs category, Orange County had 100 posts between 2nd Nov to 4th Nov. For Singapore, the duration of 28 Sep to 4th Nov was needed to obtain 100 posts. For housing, Orange County had 100 posts from 3rd Nov to 4th Nov. For Singapore, the duration was 28 Oct to 4th Nov. For the sales category, 4th Nov alone had 100 posts. Singapore needed the duration 21st Oct to 4th Nov.

Why? I would like to put forth a theory that maybe Singapore’s culture makes it harder for online classifieds to gain traction. How do we clear out stuff we don’t want? Throw at the void deck. Get the Karung Guni man to buy it. Are yard and garage sales part of our culture? Nope. A possible reason could be because most of us don’t have yards or garages to display our stuff for sale. We could use the corridors though. But I digress. The point I’m trying to make with this theory is that a possible reason why online classifieds sites are not as popular in Singapore as opposed to other places with similar population densities and even those lesser is that as an online service, it is not an extension of what we do in the physical world.

So sites competing in this market do not just have to compete with similar sites. They need to expand the market.

Secondly, let us talk about how Craigslist as an online classifieds website got started. It started as a mailing list for local events. The mailing list then expanded to be used by the users for other categories. The users then asked for a web interface.

The thing about the online classifieds sites that are competing in the Singapore space is that they are not starting out with a brand name that people trust although the sites mocca and st701 are probably getting their brand mojo by extension of their parent companies (i.e. MediaCorp and SPH respectively). Craigslist on the other hand slowly built up the trust people gave to the service before expanding to an online classifieds site covering such a wide range of categories.

I think that this is an important point.

An extension of this point is that the sites now are starting with a range of categories that they think people might be interested in or rather they are starting with what are deemed as the standard categories. For example, the categories of ‘CARS’ at st701 and ‘Vehicles’ at mocca. To me, it shows a possible lack of understanding in what is actively being traded between potential users because of the myopia forced upon site developers by the concept of standard categories. What is interesting to note is that Inkiti.com developed by a foreigner might actually have a deeper understanding of the potential users of the service. Why? There is a sub-category for car accessories. If anyone had bothered to research the forums set up for local car enthusiasts in Singapore, they would probably have not missed the fact that cars were not the only thing being traded.

At this junction, it would be useful to go back to the history of Craigslist to learn how possibly to build a successful online classifieds site. Start with a site just to share one particular set of information. Get people who find that information useful. Listen to these people to find what other categories of information they would like to share. Note that in the beginning, the group of people you have might not be big enough such that they would be interested in all types of information. As more people come, the categories can be expanded.

The thing is, I have a feeling everyone in this business tend to look at successful sites like Craigslist as a model and want to get to where they are or close to that. So they build their sites to try to be it, not realizing that Craigslist would not have been Craigslist if it hadn’t start out the way it did which was by providing just one useful service first. Better to have a small home with lots of laughter than a large sprawling mansion with silent deserted rooms.

While I can’t say which site would ultimately be the most successful in Singapore, it might be useful to note how Craigslist did become successful.

Note: Statistics obtained from Wikipedia are used as convenient reference points and should not be considered as accurate.

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