Craigslist and Ebay - What's Next for This Ecommerce Solution
A Home Business Article Contributed by Sharon Hill
Local Yokel Meets Ecommerce - One Marketing Solution
In 1995 former IBM software engineer Craig Newmark created CraigsList - what he saw as a low or no cost consumer ecommerce solution. Envisioned with a community bulletin board with classified advertising and forums for discussion, craigslist debuted in San Francisco. It wasn't until 2000 that the ecommerce solution idea expanded into other areas, creating local CraigsLists in Boston, Seattle, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Portland OR, San Diego, Washington DC and Sacramento.
In 2001 Atlanta, Austin TX, Vancouver and Denver were added. 2002 saw the debut of CraigsLists in Miami, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, and Phoenix. Dallas, Detroit, Baltimore, Cleveland, Honolulu, Las Vegas, New Orleans, Pittsburgh, Raleigh, St Louis, Tampa Bay and Houston were added in 2003 at which time CraigsList also went international with sites in London and Toronto.
2004 saw the advent of U.S. community boards in Providence RI, Nashville, Charlotte, Cincinnati and Columbus Ohio, as well as Fresno, Hartford CT, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Norfolk VA, Orlando, Albuquerque, Anchorage AK, Boise ID, Buffalo, Memphis, Salt Lake City, and Santa Barbara.
2004 international CraigsList ecommerce additions were introduced as bulletin board and online retail solutions in Manchester England, Edinburgh Scotland, Dublin Ireland, and the Australian cities of Melbourne and Sydney.
The influx of revenue that keeps CraigsList afloat as an ecommerce consumer buying solution is generated in San Francisco, New York City and Los Angeles, the only cities in which sellers must pay for their postings - $75 in San Francisco and $25 in New York or Los Angeles. And, even in those three cities the only fee-based posting are for employees. All else, like all other cities, is free of charge.
CraigsList seems to have taken the ecommerce solution of offering its viewers something free to the very extreme - and has succeeded beautifully.
Ebay Joins the Craigslist Ecommerce Solution
In August of this year eBay, the ultimate ecommerce solution, purchased a 25 percent interest in CraigsList from a former CraigsList employee and shareholder. At this point it's too early to tell how that will all play out but speculation is rampant that the various CraigsList local sites will not remain free for long.
Not a marriage made in heaven, CraigsList maintains a local flavor, while eBay focuses on a global reach. eBay is also a more conservative, professional product, whereas CraigsList is much more an alternative community bulletin board focus. While they are dissimilar in function and focus, however, this may lead them to complement each other to the benefit of all. CraigsList is now up to 5 million monthly visitors with 6 billion page views.
Other Ebay Ecommerce Solution Changes
eBay has also announced an expansion of its developer programs to support more Web service protocols and programming languages. The additional programs it will now support are Simple Object Access Protocol and Java. During the last few months the eBay ecommerce solution Developers Programs has evolved from 200 to more than 4000 developers who have created links into eBay for automated auctions listings as well as post-transaction fulfillment and so forth.
