I started playing with some of these classified ads sites that Michael Arrington posted an article about. I had read another post about theadcloud.com so I decided to check them out first. After creating an account I noticed that I could create cities. So, naturally, Des Moines (where i work) was not in there and neither was Ames (where i live). Then I wondered if there was any validation built in to the application. Sure enough, there wasn’t. I added ‘getanewbrowser.com’ as a city and it tagged it. So next I decided to post an ad under my newly created tags and the application crashed and the website went down. My apologies to theadcloud if I caused this issue. It must suck to get posted on TechCrunch and have your server go down in the same day.
Needless to say, that’s not the entire point of this article, in which I want to talk about the feasibility of local classified networks. First of all I can see this becoming the latest trend in Web 2.0, especially after Michael’s post. Be prepared for several variations of the same idea — tag based classified ads.
But is this a viable market? It seems as though these companies want to go head to head with CraigsList and your local newspaper. CraigsList has done a very good job at creating a user base and provide very simple services.
In a market like Des Moines, Ia who has not been saturated by Craigslist, there are many classified service possibilities. Competition here is primarily the newspaper. I also think that Craigslist may have their user base but have not focused on design / usability because it is quite ugly. I guess we’ll see which direction this idea of a web service goes. If implemented correctly we should see some great classified services pop up soon.
UPDATE: theadcloud.com is still down three days later. uh-oh.
techcrunch article | Three New Classifieds Companies
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