NY Times: Facebook to Offer Free Classifieds. Facebook, the social networking Web site, is adding free classified ad listings, putting it into competition with dozens of established companies like Craigslist and many newspapers.
It’s too simplistic to say it’s yet another nail in newspapers’ coffins. What’s notable is that in a sense everyone can offer classifieds these days. And, before long, everyone will.
on May 11th, 2007 at 7:51 pm
Dan,
I don’t see it as necessarily bad news for the newspapers — it seems to me that it’s much worse news for craigslist (the centralized model is breaking down so just getting people to hang around your site is not going to do it any longer…).
As always, there will be winners and losers and the newspapers can find themselves on either side (depending what they do about it): those who make best use of technology and *really* serve their customers versus those who just want to collect the money… (and spend as little as they can get away with on customer service and improvements)
It was about time for real competition to come into play!
Delia