Sunday, February 12, 2012

New East Idaho Classifieds Web site debuts

As I am writing this, Sunday afternoon, there are six items listed on www.eastidahoclassifieds.net, Riverbend Communications' entry into the world of online want ads.


Will the site be embraced to the extent that it competes with Craigslist or KSL.com? I imagine a lot will depend on promotion and marketing. Dusty Bee's Facebook posting called my attention to it.

In the interest of full disclosure, I go on to Riverbend's NewsTalk program on Tuesday morning to chat with Tim Lewis about what I see going on in the community, in hopes of building readership for BizMojo Idaho. But I would have mentioned this if it had been one of Riverbend's competitors.

From my own point of view, I doubt there's anything that can match what Craigslist has been able to accomplish in the past 10 years, both good and bad. As someone who went into print media more than 30 years ago, I would list Craigslist as one of the big things that knocked the newspaper industry sideways and changed the game completely. Before Craigslist, classifieds were a significant revenue source for newspapers. While they may be still be a significant income stream (I have personal recent experience that tells me an ad in the paper will still get results), the big question remains: "How do you compete with free?"

You're not paying to read this, are you? If I asked you to, I shudder to think how many of you actually would.

Anyway, I may put a guitar up on east idaho classifieds to see what happens. And if something does, I'll put up more.