Since the ReinventingClassifieds.com blog has been a bit quiet lately, let’s catch up with some recent classifieds news and developments.
Place your own ads online: display, not just classifieds. As noted in Newspapers & Technology, the Orange County Register has developed an online create-your-own-ad system for display ads, which can be placed in the Register as […]

Thanks to Henry Pollson for his comment here pointing out an article of interest to anyone who has to compete against Craigslist in their local market:
“Angie’s List: A better alternative to Craiglist for finding local contractors.”

Writer Henry Grimes points out his experience with finding local contractors to do work around his house. When he used […]

With newspapers in deep trouble, it’s unlikely that they can climb out of their holes by themselves (especially as the holes keep getting deeper). If a solution or solutions are to be found, it will be in concert with other companies.

Google CEO Dr. Eric Schmidt is worried about the state of investigative reporting.
Text version of […]

Dan Pacheco’s Printcasting initiative, for which he and the Bakersfield Californian got a Knight Foundation grant to fund for a 2-year development cycle, is worth paying attention to if you’re in the classifieds business. While not a classifieds project, per se, Printcasting does have some implications for classifieds, which I learned when I asked Pacheco […]

While Craigslist is the 800-pound gorilla of free classifieds (well, mostly free), it’s far from perfect. Even its top executives admit that the site is not on the cutting edge of web technology. While Craigslist does respond to user needs and some requests, there are plenty of features that could be added to make it […]

To: Craig and Jim
From: Steve (on behalf of the newspaper industry)
(OK, no, I do not actually speak for the newspaper industry; nor does ReinventingClassifieds.com. But I write this letter to you with the newspaper industry’s, journalism’s, and consumers’ best interests at heart. If any of those folks don’t agree with me, I’m sure they’ll let […]

Craig Newmark (do I really need to explain that he’s the founder of Craigslist?) went before a group of editors at the Washington Post this week, and here’s a short video excerpt:

Newmark has long been saying that his network of free-classifieds sites is not a significant reason that newspapers have lost billions of dollars in […]

If you think ReinventingClassifieds.com targets a narrow niche (newspaper classifieds), here’s a site that’s even narrower: VideoIsNow.com.
Published by Alan Jacobson and Janet DeGeorge (who also run a video classifieds business, profiled here previously), the VideoIsNow blog features ongoing coverage of video advertising, with particular emphasis on video applications for classifieds.
It’s worth bookmarking. Or subscribe to […]

JP Morgan published a report concerning the state of the newspaper. In this report the analyst Alexi Quadrani posts the classified issue as one of the central problem of today’s print newspapers:
“The classified revenue plunge is one of the more worrisome aspects, since it represents about one-third of revenue and is the most profitable of […]

“Newspaper Classifieds: A franchise lost,” reads the headline of Bob Wyman’s latest blog post, which is an exceedingly pessimistic view of newspapers’ chances of recovering lost ground and lost revenues in the classifieds business.
Writes the long-time media-technology innovator and current member of Google’s technical staff, “I argue that (newspapers) shouldn’t put much effort into online […]