The Social

Classifieds listings have returned to Facebook, thanks to the social network's partnership with e-commerce service Oodle. With Facebook Marketplace's focus on making classifieds "social," the company hopes to give Craigslist a run for its money. But at least right now, it won't mean any new revenue streams for Facebook--it's powered by ads and sponsored listings, with no transaction fees yet.

You may recall that in mid-2007, Facebook launched its own "Marketplace" feature, but it never really caught on. Late last year, Facebook made it public that Marketplace would be relaunched with Oodle's collaboration.

It's different from other Oodle-powered classifieds systems (which include News Corp.'s MySpace): namely, it looks like a Facebook news feed. You can fill out listings as though they were the social network's own status updates, by choosing one of four options (sell, sell and donate proceeds to charity, give away for free, or ask for something). Then, it'll show up in your friends' news feeds as something like, "Caroline is selling a lightsaber." You can sell items to any Facebook member, though friends-only listings are on the way, and when someone looks at your listing they can also see, for example, how many friends you have in common. Oodle and Facebook hope that will boost the trustworthiness factor.

There's no payment system, which means that buyers and sellers currently need to negotiate a means of compensation. It does, however, leave the doors open for an internal Facebook payment system, something that is either in the works or on the back burner depending on who you ask.

Additionally, at this point, posting a classified on Facebook Marketplace is free. But the service is focusing at launch on the sale and exchange of material goods. You can't hunt for jobs or apartments on it yet--that's on the way, and Oodle representatives wouldn't say whether there may be fees for these listings. (Craigslist makes its money from real estate broker fees, for example.)

Oodle and Facebook are highlighting the "donate to a charity" option, which taps into the array of nonprofits reachable through the Network for Good (it also powers the popular "Causes" application on Facebook). While there are over a million registered 501(c)3 nonprofits in the listing, about 20 are launch partners that have agreed to promote Facebook Marketplace.

Classifieds start-up Oodle will be powering Facebook's official "marketplace," the company said Tuesday. Members will be able to use it just like any third-party app on the Facebook platform--the only difference is that this one is official.

"Turning the development and management of Marketplace over to an innovator in online classifieds will give users more advanced ways to create and share listings on Facebook," Ethan Beard, Facebook's director of business development, said in a release. "We're excited by the potential of the Oodle-powered Marketplace application to offer an engaging classifieds experience on Facebook."

Facebook launched its own Marketplace about a year and a half ago, a potential rival to the Craigslist juggernaut. But it didn't really take off, and though it was never formally pulled, Facebook decided to revamp it with Oodle to "further expand the functionality and breadth of the application."

It'll relaunch early next year. Facebook, meanwhile, has been working on developing a PayPal-like payment system for quite some time; it has yet to launch, but presumably could be closely integrated with an official classifieds service.

Oodle also has powered MySpace's classifieds since July.

Police in Monroe, Wash., say they've arrested that guy who robbed an armored car outside a bank, hired unsuspecting dress-alike decoys on Craigslist to fool authorities, and escaped downriver in an inner tube, according to the Seattle Times.

Contrary to what news media had speculated, tracking him down doesn't seem to have involved Craigslist at all.

Three weeks prior to the September 30 robbery, a homeless man contacted city authorities after seeing someone recover an oddball array of items from behind the same bank branch--a black wig, a reflective safety vest, dark glasses, a two-way radio, a baseball cap, and a can of mace--and provided a license plate number. It's believed that the witness may have seen a test run of the heist-in-progress.

The actual robbery, as fans of wacky news may recall, involved a dozen people responding to a Craigslist ad for road maintenance workers who were asked to show up near the same Bank of America branch wearing a very similar outfit.

Using the license plate data, cops tracked down 28-year-old Anthony J. Curcio, recovered a "significant" amount of money from him, and are holding him in the Snohomish County Jail. His family had apparently recently had some financial difficulties, and had a prior home foreclosed. Curcio also had an infant daughter born 10 days before the robbery, according to birth announcements that the Seattle Times surfaced. Quick--somebody give him a job devising plots for CSI.

But it's not over yet: "(Police) still want to know what role the inner tube played in the robbery," the Seattle Times reported. "They believe it may have been stolen. They are asking anyone with information regarding the yellow inner tube, or the robbery, to call the Monroe Police Department."

Please, think of the inner tubes.

In an elaborate robbery scheme that's one part The Thomas Crowne Affair and one part Pineapple Express, a crook robbed an armored truck outside a Bank of America branch in Monroe, Wash., by hiring decoys through Craigslist to deter authorities.

It gets better: He then escaped in a creek headed for the Skykomish River in an inner tube, and the cops are still looking for him. "A great amount of money" was taken, Monroe police said, but did not provide a dollar value.

It appears to have unfolded this way, according to a Seattle-based NBC affiliate: around 11:00 a.m. PDT on Tuesday, the robber, wearing a yellow vest, safety goggles, a blue shirt, and a respirator mask went over to a guard who was overseeing the unloading of cash to the bank from the truck. He sprayed the guard with pepper spray, grabbed his bag of money, and fled the scene.

But here's the hilarious twist. The robber had previously put out a Craigslist ad for road maintenance workers, promising wages of $28.50 per hour. Recruits were asked to wait near the Bank of America right around the time of the robbery--wearing yellow vests, safety goggles, a respirator mask, and preferably a blue shirt. At least a dozen of them showed up after responding to the Craigslist ad.

"I came across the ad that was for a prevailing wage job for $28.50 an hour," one of the unwitting decoys, named Mike, said to the NBC station. As it turns out, they were simply placed there to confuse cops who were looking for a guy wearing a virtually identical outfit.

Authorities eventually found the getaway inner tube (a getaway inner tube!) and suspect that accomplices may have picked up the robber in a boat. According to the NBC affiliate, police hope to track him down by figuring out who posted the Craigslist ad in the first place.

Craigslist founder Craig Newmark was not immediately available for comment.

News Corp.'s MySpace will relaunch its classified-listing section on Monday through a partnership with Oodle, the company is set to announce later in the day.

While it's no Craigslist, MySpace said its existing classifieds section pulls in a million visitors per month, and that the improved technology from Oodle--better search and filtering, more extensive ways to tweak listings--will ideally pull in more users.

Among the new features is a way for individual users to share listings with friends lists, which the company calls "social commerce." Considering MySpace's slant toward entertainment and music, this could turn into a choice spot for finding stuff like last-minute concert tickets--as well as friends to hit up that show with you.

In addition, other Oodle listings from across the Web will be listed alongside MySpace's own, bolstering the offering and potentially providing a worthwhile alternative to the Craigslist juggernaut. According to MySpace, this will mean more than 500,000 new listings every day. This is because Oodle's reach is big: currently, the site aggregates listings from just about everywhere but Craigslist, including eBay's Kijiji.

Rival Facebook already has a commerce section called Facebook Marketplace, which isn't one of the site's most popular or high-profile features but is nevertheless still alive and kicking. It might get a leg up when the service launches a much-anticipated payment system--currently anticipated for sometime next year.

Bye-bye, Expo. We, um, didn't use you.

(Credit: Windows Live Expo)

This post was updated at 11:56 AM with comment from Microsoft.

Chalk one point up to Craigslist: Microsoft has decided to shut down Windows Live Expo, the classifieds service that it originally launched in February 2006.

Expo will disappear on July 31, a notice on the site explains. Until then, no new listings can be posted or extended, and no new accounts can be created. Microsoft representatives responded on Friday with a statement from the company: "We have learned a tremendous amount from our experience with Windows Live Expo and believe this decision, while a hard one, will serve to more effectively focus our resources towards other priority online service investments for our customers."

The most recent post on the Expo blog is from last September.

Online classifieds continue to be dominated by Craigslist, a scrappy start-up with a hippie attitude and a user interface worthy of 1997. The company is currently ensnared in a legal tiff with major investor eBay over the auction giant's in-house classifieds site, Kijiji.

In a tiff over its 28.4 percent share in Craigslist, auction giant eBay has filed suit against the online classifieds site in a Delaware court of chancery. According to Reuters, eBay has accused Craigslist's board of directors of diluting its share.

The court confirmed that eBay filed its complaint Tuesday afternoon but could not provide further details, because the suit was filed under seal.

In a phone conversation, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark said, "We're still trying to digest it," and recommended contacting CEO Jim Buckmaster for further comment. Buckmaster did not immediately reply to an e-mail inquiry.

Newmark, Buckmaster, and the Craigslist company are reportedly named as defendants in the suit, the Reuters article asserts.

You don't mess with Craigslist, apparently.

A fan-run blog called Craigslist Blog has been served a takedown notice from the massive classifieds site, according to a post from blogger Tim White on Thursday.

Jim Buckmaster, Craigslist CEO

(Credit: Craigslist)

White posted the e-mail he'd received from Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster, which claimed that White's URL "craigslistblog.org" was "infringing" and that its name was "needlessly confusing to members of the media and the general public, and must be changed." Buckmaster did not demand that White stop blogging, but he did request that he stop using the domain, turn it over to Craigslist, and additionally stop posting excerpts from Craigslist on the unofficial blog.

In response, White agreed to stop excerpting Craigslist content, and the unofficial Craigslist Blog now prominently displays the phrase "(the unofficial one)" in its masthead. But White wouldn't back down on the domain.

"I think you have received bad legal counsel and that this is potentially a really bad PR move for (Craigslist)," his e-mail response to Buckmaster said, an allusion to the company's friendly, hippie image.

Buckmaster seemed none too pleased with White's response, and in a second e-mail that White posted to his blog, he reminded the blogger that Craigslist's law firm of choice, Perkins Cole, "also does intellectual property work for Google, and for a lot of other prominent companies."

When White launched the Craigslist Blog last month, Craigslist did not have its own blog. That's changed recently, as Buckmaster now authors an official Craigslist blog. A report earlier this week estimated that Craigslist's annual revenue is likely around $80 million and could be significantly higher, except that the company is "not about the money."

UPDATE: The Craigslist post in question has been flagged for removal.

A Craigslist ad for an available room in a two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan's pricey West Village claimed that the asking price was $1 per month--and a fresh batch of cookies every day. (As of Wednesday morning, the ad was flagged for removal and is no longer available on Craigslist.)

Funny, I didn't know he lived in the Village.

(Credit: Public Broadcasting Service)

Yeah, it's tongue-in-cheek. As Gotham gossip blog Jossip put it, "There's no way someone would really rent out a room in the West Village for $1 a month and daily fresh baked cookies. In the West Village, you could get at least $50 a month and daily fresh baked cookies."

But considering New York's wacky real-estate climate, where $1,000 per month for a room's rent is considered cheap, plenty of cash-strapped urbanites would probably take up either offer in a heartbeat.

"You would be sharing the (two-bedroom apartment) with me, and you must bake me cookies every day," the ad explained. "I will tell you what kind of cookies the night before, and you have until 6 PM the next day to have 50 of them baked and delicious for me."

OK, sounds doable.

"You may not use nutmeg unless I EXPLICITLY give you permission," the ad continued. "Violation of this rule will result in immediate eviction and denunciation unto God."

That's easy to remember. Just leave nutmeg off the shopping list.

But the picky eater goes on: "I do like cinnamon, however. Anise is banned, as are caraway, cardamom, and allspice. You may use vanilla extract, but not the bean. Walnuts, almonds, and filberts are approved, whereas peanuts, macadamias, and cashews are not. Raisins are encouraged."

OK, as long as chocolate's allowed.

After delineating even more requirements for the construction and presentation of the cookies, the advertiser gives instructions for interested tenants: "If interested, please send me your favorite recipe for cookies, a short poem about cookies, and a picture of nice-looking cookies."

Hold on, let me go grab my camera.