Classified advertising action is in the air! On a day that saw Microsoft take a minority position with Career Builder, Facebook (NYTime story) and Friendster (release) each announced they’ll be launching classified systems this week.
Classifieds are a good idea (I think) in social nets. And FREE classified are even better. We’ve certainly seen how Craig’s List has been able to make this (free) model pay thanks to help wanted ads. No doubt the social net systems will drive more page views and create new revenue opportunities. I’m guessing both Facebook and Friendster will expect the users’ “social currency” to be a lubricant to drive more trust and therefore more use of their markets.
MySpace classifieds
You can see from the screen capture above the various ways in which revenue can be generated from “free” classifieds. I went to MySpace classifieds and clicked on “automotive”. You can see a banner ad on top from Toyota. You may not be able to see the Google paid ads in the blue box, but they’re also targeted to automotive deals in my area (except one for enterprise software company SAP. And I thought Google wasn’t into behaviorial targeting). Ofcourse MySpace also features the Google search tool on the page as well. So that’s at least 3 revenue streams right there, and I haven’t even reached the “free” classifieds yet.
On a side note:
I didn’t sign into the system. I simply followed a link from Paid Content to MySpace classifieds. Interestingly, the MySpace cookie trail has me starting in Los Angeles, whereas Google is showing me Indianapolis offers.
As usual, I heard it first at paid content.
My thoughts:
As I said before, classifieds are a good idea for social nets. Users already have something in common, and if the system has a reputation system, then the trust level is already established and more transactions should result.
I don’t know the data, but I would imagine that the lion’s share of classified transactions happen locally, with buyers and sellers living near eachother. Obviously this is not always the case, but I do believe that social nets with strong membership in a local market have a distinct advantage in certain categories of goods and services - housing and automotive and jobs, for example.
We’ve been kicking around this idea for our network, which is much smaller than MySpace or Facebook, but on a local level we feel we might be able to pull it off relatively well. We’re even thinking about adding “nearly free” classifieds, begining in our Indiana HS football channel.
More on this later. Gotta get to work.
