Online employment classified distribution heats up

Was reading today that Seek and Yahoo!7 have re-married after 3 years of Yahoo! eloping with Fairfax's MyCareer offering.

Seek and Yahoo! were strong partners - Seek was Yahoo!'s first investment outside of the US - and the 2 enjoyed a mutually beneficial classified distribution arrangement up until the end of 2005 when Yahoo! migrated all classifieds deals over to Fairfax.

Now they're back in bed - and talking up a joint website (which I imagine is Seek's engine and backend with a Yahoo! top and tail frame job)

Full article - http://www.smartcompany.com.au/Free-Articles/The-Briefing/20080910-SEEK-and-Yahoo7-launch-jobs-partnership.html

For Yahoo! this is a good source of revenue. You'd estimate there's probably around $1m to be gained yearly dependant on the commercials. Plus they are aligning with the market leader, which is ideal.

Also saw that News's Careerone and Ebay have launched a similar distribution initiative called ebay jobs. The combination seems very odd to me - who goes to ebay to look for work?

http://www.smartcompany.com.au/Free-Articles/The-Briefing/20080822-News-Corp-and-eBay-launch-new-jobs-site.html

I guess it's a win/win. Ebay will getting paid based on the traffic it can deliver to careerone. Careerone is hoping that distribution across ebay's mega base audience gives them incremental traffic - traffic they can use to justify their charges to job advertisers. Despite some additional revenue for ebay (which they are under pressure to generate), I don't see the upside for ebay nor the benefit for their users.

The classifieds space is ultra competitive - so these deals, whilst they seem a little odd - come at a premium as each of the main players wants desperately to increase their base usage.

Would you miss ...

I was at a lunch the other day and we were talking about certain online properties and whether people would miss them if they suddently disappeared off the face of the earth.

It stemmed from me making a comment that online there are, effectively, too many versions of the same product in numerous areas. Do we need 112 weather sites? Probably not. Do we need 400 sites that have sports scores? Absolutely not.

I am of the belief a slimming down of most publishers offerings would be beneficial to all involved - the user, the publisher and their advertisers.

I noticed this has been a recurring theme on the Brand Autopsy blog - http://brandautopsy.typepad.com/brandautopsy/2008/05/would-you-mis-1.html

So ... what are those web sites/areas that if they vanished, users would quite easily get the same experience elsewhere?

I can only speak for myself - so what are the five sites I would miss if I woke up tomorrow and they were gone ...

I encourage you to add your own comments. Then each week we'll go through a variety of online offerings and ask the question 'Would you miss [x]?'

My 5 essentials

1. Google. It organises information. Keeps me connected. Without the GOOG I'd feel helpless. Search, maps, video, images ... handy for work and home.

2. MSN Messenger. I use it for work, play, transferring files, talking to friends ... it is a huge time saver for me and it's been a daily staple for 10 years.

3. Techcrunch. Keeps me updated on my profession. I would miss a lot if it disappeared.

4. ebay. Has revolutionised selling and buying. I am comfortable with the interface. I have picked up heaps of cool things from there. I love how it empowers both buyers and sellers.

5. Trip Advisor. Before this travel was a mess online. Another great example of shared knowledged through an engaged community.

Trading Post states long term goal: "Become Australia’s favourite place to buy and sell"

So said Sensis CEO Bruce Akhurst today.

AdNews - http://www.adnews.com.au/News.cfm?NewsId=4750

"Sensis CEO Bruce Akhurst today (26 May) said his aim was to make Trading Post the number one online auction site in Australia.

"On top of the two million people that already use tradingpost.com.au each month, there are an additional 3.4 million Australians using online auctions that are not currently using Trading Post," Akhurst said. "And while auctions have only just started on tradingpost.com.au, our aim is to build up the number of items available and become Australia’s favourite place to buy and sell."

I think it's a tough task.

According to Netview

Ebay users - 5.212m

Trading Post users (taking a de-dup'd figure of Trading Post and Trading Post - Auto) - 827k

Sensis is saying they have 2m unique users on Trading Post - however no Neilsen data backs this up.

Regardless, that's a fair gap. I understand a mission is meant to be an ambitious, almost impossible goal ... but pegging back 4m plus users from a service that is one of the most loved ... tough!

Screenshot above of the Netview de-duplicated figure.

Banksy making plenty of bank

Non digital but newsworthy nonetheless.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/entertainment/banksy-sale-goes-to-the-wall/2008/01/14/1200159360514.html

"A wall painted on by mysterious British graffiti artist Banksy has sold for £208,100 ($A453,700) today, according to the results of an eBay auction."

Lets hope my limited Nick Walker Mona Simpson stencil is worth the same in a few years.