Kijiji ( kee-JEE-jee; Swahili: [ki'?i?i], village) is an online classified advertising service that operates as a centralized network of online communities, organized by city and urban region, for posting local ads. It is a fully owned subsidiary of eBay launched in March 2005. Kijiji websites are available for more than 300 cities in Canada (Alexa website rank of 12 for Canada), Italy (Alexa website rank of 82 for Italy), Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Kijiji was made available to selected cities in the United States on June 29, 2007, but was changed to eBay Classifieds in 2010.
Kijiji offers similar services and is seen as a competitor to Craigslist with the biggest differences being that Kijiji gets much less U.S. traffic and has an extensive pets section.
Kijiji is the most popular online classified service in Canada. It is one of the top ten websites in Canada, and draws three times the amount of traffic drawn to Craigslist in that country. The New York Times referred to Kijiji's Canadian site as representing "one of the few online brands that fizzled in the United States but found success elsewhere."
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History
Kijiji was originally launched as "a start-up within eBay created by a small team of entrepreneurial employees," according to eBay's March, 2005 press release announcing the new service.
In May 2005 eBay acquired the British-based online-classifieds service Gumtree, which operates in cities in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Poland, Hong Kong, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, as well as the Spanish company LoQUo. One month later it acquired OpusForum.org, another website offering online classifieds in Germany. In July 2006, Klaus Gapp, the founder of OpusForum, noted that after its acquisition it had "merged with its new Kijiji classifieds business in the German speaking markets of Austria, Germany and Switzerland."
In August 2008, Kijiji re-branded its Kijiji India site to Quikr.
In 2009, the Kijiji Germany website had changed its names to eBay Kleinanzeigen.
In February 2010, Kijiji withdrew its personal section in the United States and Canada.
In March 2010, eBay unveiled a new classifieds site, called eBay Classifieds, to replace its old site, Kijiji, in the United States.
In November 2012, Kijiji entered into a listing partnership with Rentseeker.ca in Canada.
Legal Conflict With Craigslist
Kijiji's owner (eBay) is also a minority shareholder in Craigslist. In April 2008, eBay launched a lawsuit against Craigslist claiming that their executives were attempting to weaken eBay's investment, while in May of the same year, Craigslist filed a counter suit claiming Kijiji had stolen trade secrets and that eBay used misleading tactics to promote the service.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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