I find this BusinessWeek article, “A Web of Classified Ad Rivals Challenges Craigslist,” somewhat encouraging, especially for us smaller ad sites. According to this article, Craigslist is finally getting challenged by some well funded players. Granted these players are dominating overseas online classified markets, not the US yet. But major classified ads services such as Oodle and OLX believe the US market is ripe for the picking. How will they do that? It’s one word – innovation. It forces change and that’s exactly what this space needs (a little 21st century) and a little healthy competition always benefit the consumer.

According to this article, OLX (now the #2 ad site in the world) aka “David” is expected to bring in $10 million next year. It is still a long way from Craigslist aka “Goliath” who is estimated to bring in $100 million in sales but everyone knows they leave a lot more on the table. But frankly speaking, I didn’t think anyone else could bring in that much with Craigslist’s stranglehold – just ask the other online classified ad sites and print newspapers around the country.

Here are some statistics from compete.com – it’s a bit dated though

http://siteanalytics.compete.com/craigslist.org+kijiji.com+olx.com/

I am surprised Craigslist had no comment for this article. Why not? Concern, arrogance or both?

They might want to recheck the speck in their rear view mirror – it’s getting a litter bigger – finally.