Online classifieds become a battleground

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Posted by Mathew @ 4:57 pm on November 30 2005 | |

Online-classified service Craigslist.com is extremely popular, with close to 9 million unique visitors in September according to some estimates. So how much is it worth? (figuring out how much various Web services are worth seems to have become a new sport).

Based on Om Malik’s rough rule of thumb from recent deals for companies such as MySpace.com and Weblogs Inc., which he said produced an average value of $38 (U.S.) per unique monthly visitor, Craigslist would be worth about $330-million (by way of comparison, that’s about 16.5 times the company’s revenue, which is higher than the range that Jason Calacanis thinks is reasonable for an online property, but a lot less than the almost 70 times revenue eBay agreed to pay for Skype, based on the $4.1-billion price tag).

The value of Craigslist might be about to go down, however, as the online classified game heats up. There’s Google Base, for example, which admittedly is rather confusing to use and therefore perhaps less of a threat (or more, depending on who you believe). And then there’s a little company whose name begins with “Micro” and ends in “soft.” The behemoth from Redmond is rumoured to be launching a new online-classified style service codenamed “Fremont,” according to various sources, including TechCrunch.

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Mathew posted this article under Microsoft, Web2.0 on Wednesday, November 30th, 2005 at 4:57 pm. . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed, and you can also view Technorati Linkbacks or check for other responses using YackTrack.