http://www.reinventingclassifieds.com Traditional classifieds are broken. Help us reinvent them. Fri, 15 Aug 2008 20:54:24 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Long-time newspaper journalist turned interactive media expert Joe Michaud recently left his post as president of MaineToday.com (part of the Portland Press-Herald in Maine) and joined the AIM Group/Classified Intelligence as senior analyst. Now that he's settled into his home office outside Portland to work for AIM and consult for ... http://www.reinventingclassifieds.com/2008/08/15/michaud-the-catalog-approach-to-newspaper-classifieds/ 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 ... http://www.reinventingclassifieds.com/2008/08/11/angie-may-have-answer-to-where-craig-can-be-beat/ I'm working on a white paper / report about how to redesign print classifieds sections for the modern world. (I'll keep you posted on my progress and when it might be available.) And I have to say: It's disturbing how slowly that's happening, especially at U.S. newspapers. If you look around ... http://www.reinventingclassifieds.com/2008/08/08/wheres-the-innovation-on-print-classifieds/ 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 ... http://www.reinventingclassifieds.com/2008/08/06/help-write-an-open-letter-to-google/ 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 ... http://www.reinventingclassifieds.com/2008/07/30/printcasting-the-advertising-implications/ 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 ... http://www.reinventingclassifieds.com/2008/07/24/as-craiglist-remains-low-tech-jickacom-looks-to-overtake-it-on-features/ American media designer and consultant Alan Jacobson has had some luck convincing newspaper publishers outside the US to sign off on some fairly disruptive redesigns for classifieds. One interesting example is aviso-oportuno.com.mx, which (via Jacobson's firm) redid its web classifieds in a way that severely simplified the interface. aviso-oportuno.com.mx is the ... http://www.reinventingclassifieds.com/2008/07/18/innovation-a-simplified-classifieds-entry-point/ When is the newspaper industry going to stop reacting and start to act? Maybe we should be first with something. We want someone to SAVE the oldest news gathering and communications industry in the world? The rest of the world should be saying, "How do we keep up with newspapers?" Who ... http://www.reinventingclassifieds.com/2008/07/16/guest-opinion-invent-something-already/ 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 ... http://www.reinventingclassifieds.com/2008/07/11/an-open-letter-to-craigslist/ How bad do things have to get before publishers and classifieds managers are willing to do a complete (and badly needed) remodel of newspaper printed classified sections? 'No one wants to be first. It’s amazing to me that they can’t/won’t/don’t want to try something different!' -Bill OstendorfThat question kept popping into my ... http://www.reinventingclassifieds.com/2008/07/07/bill-ostendorf-redesigning-and-saving-printed-newspaper-classifieds/