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.
Particls, a company that once provided RSS feed organizers, announced Monday that it has launched a new project, called Particls Fountain. According to the company, the project will replace Twitter Track, which allowed the microblog's users to follow topics by keyword, and users will be able to use it with Google Talk or Twitter itself.
To start using Particls Fountain, the company says users will first need to follow @particls on Twitter. To track a specific keyword, users can then start a request with "d particls" and follow that with the keyword they want to have access to. Once that tweet is transmitted, any and all mentions of the particular keyword will be sent directly to the individual Twitter user. As you might expect, the service is free.
AOL Classifieds announced Monday that it has enlisted the help of Oodle, a classifieds aggregator that has already inked similar deals with Facebook and MySpace, to power AOL's classifieds page. According to the company, AOL's page will feature more than 30 million listings aggregated from more than 80,000 sites. Each classified listing will link users to other properties in the AOL network, including autos, personals, and real estate. A Canadian version is also available Monday and the UK iteration will launch later this week.
Publisher affiliate aggregator Skimlinks announced Monday that it has raised an undisclosed sum of funding in a round that was led by Sussex Place Ventures. According to the company's executives, who recently changed the company's name from Skimbit, they will use the funding to expand their new focus as an aggregator.
Insurance.com, an online auto insurance agency, announced that its board of directors has appointed Robert Klapper as its new CEO. Klapper succeeds Dave Roush, the company's founder, who will remain chairman of the board. Prior to his new appointment, Klapper was CEO at One Day University and a former CMO at Prosper Marketplace, an online peer-to-peer lender.
DubMeNow, a company that provides users with the ability to exchange contact information via text or e-mail in one click is available now on all US phones. According to the company, the tool will load contact information directly into the user's mobile address book and updates it automatically whenever the contact's information changes. DubMeNow partnered with Microsoft, Google, Salesforce.com, RIM, and LinkedIn on the technology.
Mission AdWorks launched its "socially responsible" advertising network Monday, which connects publishers, bloggers, and other site owners who are "making a positive impact on the world" with marketers. The network features verticals in topics ranging from environmental community, social enterprise community, youth media and community, and others.
Responding to its users' desire for more restaurant review offerings, TripAdvisor announced Tuesday that throughout 2009, it will be adding features that will allow visitors to do more than review eateries on the site. So far, the site features 2 million reviews and ratings on 500,000 restaurants worldwide. To help users search through those more effectively, TripAdvisor added price, cuisine, and "recommended for" filters to its restaurant page Tuesday.
Also, the company has partnered with OpenTable.com to allow U.S. users to make a reservation directly on TripAdvisor's site. The company's new iPhone app, dubbed Local Picks, lets users find local restaurants and use the device's location-based technology to find restaurants nearby. More features will be announced later this year. Goodrec offers a similar service.
Online radio service Slacker Radio has launched five new stations in time for Valentine's Day. Its Broken Heart Radio station will feature "a melancholy mix of lost love and yearning with a touch of soulful redemption." Slow Jamz aims at getting you in the mood with songs from Marvin Gaye and others, while Rock Ballads Radio tries to bring you and your loved one back to the 1970s and 1980s. All of the company's Valentine's Day stations are live now.
XLR8 Mobile, a company that offers customizable widgets for sharing videos, music, and pictures across social networks, announced that it has changed its name to Dijit. The company's CEO, Eric Allen, claims the name change was the result of his company's "commitment" to developing new technology that allows users to share their original content and focus more on sharing. The company's new name was announced in conjunction with the release of a beta version of its widget platform.
Oodle, a network for online classifieds, announced Tuesday that it raised $5.6 million in funding from existing investors, Greylock Partners, JAFCO Ventures, and Redpoint Ventures. The company, which announced last year that it will power Facebook's Marketplace, will use the funding to form more partnerships. The Facebook Marketplace is scheduled to launch later this quarter.
Search marketing and analytic firm Enquisite, closed an $8 million round of financing that was led by Castile Ventures and Formative Ventures. According to the company, it plans to use the funding for product development and marketing efforts it hopes will expand its operation.
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.
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.
Oodle helps you grok your market.
The classifieds aggregator site Oodle has just launched its 2.0 version. While the underlying functionality hasn't changed, the site got a good design refresh and now presents more relevant data to the user. And, of course, its database of crawled sites continues to grow, making the results more relevant.
As before, Oodle does some semantic analysis of your search query when you go looking for an item. If you type in "Toyota Sienna," Oodle knows it's a car, and on the results page lets you narrow your selection down by model year, color, mileage, and so on. The site also now displays useful data, including charts showing pricing trends (see also MPire, which does this for new items) and the number of new listings that match your search that it expects will pop up in the upcoming week. That bit of information can help you decide how aggressive you need to be about jumping on a listing you like. Oodle also tells you how much the listed price for an item is above or below the average for the product, and it seems to be smart about things like model years, which makes it highly useful.
You can also set up e-mail alerts, so you're notified when new listings matching your query appear. This is great if you want to watch the market for an item before you get serious about buying.
Oodle claims that improved spam detection in 2.0 will also reduce the number of bogus entries you have to deal with in your search.
Oodle 2.0 really is an improvement. The site is now smarter and more useful than before. However, Oodle still doesn't index Craigslist, which is a crying shame and a topic for a good rant (against Craigslist), but it does search eBay and Kijiji, the classifieds site eBay's acquired in 2005.
Listpic, the controversial visual front-end for Craigslist, has made the switch to classifieds service Oodle.com. The change comes after last week's cease and desist order from Craigslist, which forced Listpic to discontinue scraping data from the popular classifieds service. Listpic was apparently sucking up so much of Craigslist's bandwidth that the site's performance had suffered. Craigslist then fired back with legal action.
Oodle.com is a service that aggregates classifieds listings from a number of local and national sites. It claims to let users search over 20 million listings that have been pulled from more than 75,000 classified sites.
Before the current swap, creator Ryan Sit had temporarily moved the service to Backpage.com, which hosts its own classifieds service. Listpic has retained the same, simplistic look and feel, visual thumbnail browsing, and the advertisements that coincidentally got it into trouble in the first place.
Listpic classifieds now come from Oodle.com instead of Craigslist.
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