Kijiji

Kijiji (English pronunciation: /kiˈdʒiːdʒi/ kee-JEE-jee; Swahili: [kʰiˈʄiʄi], Swahili for village^[1]) is a centralized network of online groups of people for writing local online classified advertisements. It is a subsidiary of eBay launched in March 2005.^[2] Kijiji is currently available for more than 300 cities in Germany. Further Kijiji countries are France, Italy, Canada, China, India, Taiwan, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, and Japan. Kijiji was made available to selected cities in the United States on June 29, 2007, under the name of eBay Classifieds.

Kijiji Canada

Type of site	Classifieds
Owner	eBay
URL	kijiji.ca
Launched	March 2005; 20 years ago (2005-03)

Kijiji offers similar services and is seen as a competitor to Craigslist with the biggest exception being that Kijiji has quite an extensive pets section. Kijiji's owner eBay is also a minority shareholder in Craigslist. In April 2008 eBay launched a lawsuit against Craigslist claiming that their executives were attempting to weaken eBay's investment, while in May of the same year, Craigslist filed a countersuit claiming Kijiji had stolen trade secrets and that eBay used misleading tactics to promote the service.^[3][4]

Divisions

In November 2004, eBay acquired Marktplaats.nl, which offers a similar classifieds service in the Netherlands, holding an 80% market share.^[5]

At that time, Marktplaats.nl had set out into Spain, Germany, Turkey and Canada under the name of Intoko. Intoko Spain merged with Loquo, Intoko Germany merged with Kijiji Germany and Intoko Canada merged with Kijiji Canada. Intoko Turkey transferred to the Kijiji platform and is currently operating as intoko.kijiji.com.tr.

In May 2005, eBay bought Gumtree,^[6] which offers a similar service for cities in the UK, Ireland, Poland, Hong Kong, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, as well as the Spanish company Loquo.^[7] One month later, it acquired OpusForum.org, another website offering online classifieds in Germany.^[8] In July 2006, Klaus Gapp, the founder of OpusForum, noted that, after its acquisition, it had "merged with its new Kijiji classifieds business in the German speaking markets of Austria, Germany and Switzerland."^[9] In August 2008, Kijiji re-branded their India site to Quikr.com.^[10]

The Kijiji Germany website has changed its name to eBay Kleinanzeigen.

In March 2010, eBay unveiled a new classifieds site, called eBay Classifieds, to replace its old site, Kijiji, in the United States. ^[11]