OLX aspires to become the leading free local classified site on a global level. The company was created in March 2006, the site launch announced on this blog on April 1, 2006 and we started marketing it in May 2006.

It is still early days, but the early results are encouraging. The site already has over 8,000 listings on a global level, gets 2,000 replies per month and did 3 million page views in May. Traffic is growing nicely as can be seen on the Alexa chart below:

We are seemingly successful in creating some liquidity, but a lot of work remains to be done – on a local level there are still very few listings and still have very little organic traffic. It’s unclear whether all the features we have added have made a meaningful difference for users. Outside the U.S., traffic, while cheaper to obtain, does not convert to postings and replies as effectively – maybe because people are not used to classifieds.

It’s interesting that the main problem we have encountered to date has been spam – both in the listings and the replies to the listings. We’ve had to implement numerous counter measures to limit spam. This creates an interesting dilemma because we want to keep the site as simple as possible – and yet limit spam…

In the coming days we will release the beta version of the mobile version – people will be able to visit OLX by entering olx.com on their phone browser, we will add video support and poll users on potential new designs.

We’ll see how it goes – fingers crossed!