eBay claimed that Craig Newmark, Craigslist’s founder, and its chief executive Jim Buckmaster, began unspecified measures in January that put eBay at a disadvantage and reduced eBay’s economic interest by 10%. Craigslist did not sit back and allow the allegations however, and suggested in a blog that eBay had intended a hostile takeover of Craigslist from the start, or a sale to another company: “EBay has absolutely no reason to feel threatened – unless a hostile takeover of Craigslist, or the sale of eBay’s stake in Craigslist to an unfriendly party, is their ultimate goal.”

eBay has continued to push the growth of Kijiji, renaming the company to eBayClassifieds.com and adding a new mobile application which would allow users to view and add to the classifieds with their cellular phones. The idea of the mobile application is that users would be able to take pictures with their phones and create listings instantly – something that cannot currently happen with Craigslist.

Craigslist classified site gets between 50 and 60 million visitors per month in the US alone, while eBay’s kijiji receives less than 6 million visitors per month – according to compete.com. Craigslist is the most visible community site in existence – and also the most underdeveloped in terms of technology! As web features grow in popularity, Craigslist remains a mostly text site, with very little customer support or advanced applications. Most marketing experts will explain that a company’s brand and positioning is everything to it’s level of success. Craigslist’s founder operates the company very similar to a philanthropic venture – from an article on wired.com:

Newmark’s claim of almost total disinterest in wealth dovetails with the way craigslist does business. Besides offering nearly all of its features for free, it scorns advertising, refuses investment, ignores design, and does not innovate. Ordinarily, a company that showed such complete disdain for the normal rules of business would be vulnerable to competition, but craigslist has no serious rivals. The glory of the site is its size and its price. But seen from another angle, craigslist is one of the strangest monopolies in history, where customers are locked in by fees set at zero and where the ambiance of neglect is not a way to extract more profit but the expression of a worldview.

If eBay intends to compete with Craigslist in the classified word, it may need to focus more on positioning and branding and less on trying to sue Craigslist.

Ebay (NASDAQ:EBAY) and Craigslist Continue Online Classifieds Competition was created by and is property of American Consumer News.

If you were to list a car, a new computer, or another item that cost in the range of $500 to $10,000 dollars, chances are you will be contacted by a number of “potential customers” who seem to be very excited to purchase the item up for sale and want to pay you with a cashier’s check. It might not even be an item you have for sale. You might be renting out an apartment or anything where someone would send you money because of a listing on Craigslist. They will tell you that the cashier’s check has already been cut for more than the amount that you are charging for the item.

The scam artist will send you the cashier’s check and your bank will cash it, even though it’s a bad check. Chances are they will tell you that it’s a good and perfectly legitimate check even though in all reality it’s almost certainly a fake. You’ll deposit the check, find the money in your account, and since you think you have their money, you happily send them the difference, you might even give them the item. It might be three of four months later before you find out that the check you were sent is fraudulent and then the back will take the whole amount of the cashier’s check out of your account.

The criminal now has the item that you had for sale and the money you sent to them on top of the cashier’s check! Chances are you won’t be able to track down the criminal and get justice, as they are often overseas and you’re just out of luck. If you get an offer like this on Craigslist, have absolutely no contact with the individual offering you the cashier’s check!

Don’t Become the Next Victim of a Craigslist Scam. was created by and is property of American Consumer News.