OLX acquires eBay and Craigslist
Saturday April 1, 2006, 8:00 am ET
NEW YORK – Apr. 1, 2006 – OLX, the new leader in online classifieds and auctions, announced today that it acquired eBay and Craigslist.
eBay and Craigslist will be immediately renamed OLX. “Craigslist’s number one mission has always been to provide a public service to its community. Working with OLX serves that mission as it brings a slew of great new features to our community with the continued commitment to be free for consumers” said Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist. “eBay’s and Craigslist’s user bases will allow us to provide unrivaled liquidity in all the major categories” said Fabrice Grinda, co-CEO of OLX.
eBay and Craigslist users will get access to OLX unique features including:
- A city, neighborhood and zip code database so we can cover an entire country and not just pre-selected cities
- A distance field allowing you to see postings within a certain range of your zip code in the countries where it is possible
- Ability to post items in virtual worlds (e.g.; SecondLife)
- Ability to include videos and pictures in listings
- Ajax WYSIWYG editor for richer listings
- Ability to comment on listings to create a stronger community
- Advanced search allowing searches at variable regional settings
- Auction and Buy It Now options and a rating system for the For Sale category
- Ability to post listings in any language in any country
- Ability to view the site in any country in any language
- Global reach
- Mobile version
Users are encouraged to try out OLX now at www.olx.com in anticipation of all the great features they will be receiving in the near future.
About OLX, Inc.
Founded in 2006, OLX offers a new generation of classified and auction service providing a more local service on a global level. OLX includes classified listings for jobs, housing, goods and services, personals, events and community, plus a wide variety of discussion forums. OLX is based in New York and has offices in Buenos Aires. OLX is a privately held company. For more information, visit www.olx.com.
About eBay Inc.
Founded in 1995, eBay pioneers communities built on commerce, sustained by trust, and inspired by opportunity. eBay enables ecommerce on a local, national and international basis with an array of websites – including the eBay Marketplace, PayPal, Skype, Kijiji, Rent.com and Shopping.com – that bring together millions of buyers and sellers every day.
About craigslist
Founded in 1995 by Craig Newmark, craigslist is widely known as an archetype of online community – a democratic, trustworthy, and efficient platform for fulfilling basic human needs, as guided by real world communities worldwide. craigslist includes classified listings for jobs, housing, goods and services, personals, events, and community, plus a wide variety of discussion forums.
nice :)
Dear Fabrice,
As I wrote the first day you started your personal website after working at Zingy, the United States should thank you for showing everyone the way mobile had to be approached. You as well as Nokia and Vodafone really changed the rules in this market (and I’m proud I have worked with these three companies). Even before creating Zingy, you created an extremely successful company in the on-line auction world. Now that OLX acquired eBay and Craigslist, you are really at the top of your game – not only in the on-line auction business but much, much more.
Here’s to you, my friend, for another outstanding success.
Congratulations.
Massimo
Wow that is incredible. Congratulations Fabrice.
-Khanan
Hmmmm… Why do I get the feeling people are taking the “press release” a bit too literally 🙂
Great overall concept… shame it has to be an April Fool…
thanks god I’v got OLX stocks 😉
NICE PRESS RELEASE FABRICE! LOL. Any way, best luck in these new proyects that you are going into, and hope that those PR come true, for shure.
Fabrice,
Good april 1st joke, you had me there on allmydata for a sec 🙂 Question for you, you talked in your blog initially about startups and how it is not a democracy and one needs to dictate properly at an early stage firm……so the question is, why are you just the co-CEO of OLX, I don’t think I have ever really heard of co-CEO’s being able to successfully run a firm, even google has made that distinction ???
I thought about that for a while but given the global scale of the project and the fact that the tech team is in Buenos Aires, I felt it best to split the work with Alec Oxenford, the former CEO of Deremate. There is an easy geographic split of the work. Moreover, I control the board and the majority of the equity. I am not sure if co-CEO makes that much difference as a title, it could have been Chairman/CEO on the one hand and President/COO on the other. We may yet change it to that when the company grows.
Hi Fabrice,
Good april 1st joke! :-D.
To be honest….OLX sounds greater than eBay…It means…”An OLX company” could look nice under the eBay Logo.
Whatever…Now i am working on a project that is called “Emprendia.org” and our slogan is: “Dream. Create. Live” .
And i am convinced that it´s all about that…To be successful you MUST dream.
Congrats for OLX!: great (and POWERFULL) name and very nice design.
I guess it should be (in a short or long future) an alternative to sell online.
The best from Argentina,
Alexis.
I know you are setting up for a buyout of OLX by ebay at some point down the road n’est pas?
Oi…..enough harassing you for one night. The Coca Cola has worn off and its off to bed….
Not necessarily actually. If I can grow the company to be huge in its own right, I would prefer to do that. Moreover, eBay is not necessarily the most logical buyer. Our business model (free, advertising supported) may not be compatible with their business model (listing and success fees).
I miss listpic! Nothing could do a whore check on craigslist more efficiently! ( nothing more hysterical than sitting with friends perusing the “ladies” on craigslist projected on the wall by DLP. Definitely a GOOD(?),BAD and the VERY UGLY type of situation. It took care of the redundant posting situation very well. Like a knife through butter. Not to mention how it would help with the bookshelves I had to post 10 times before I could get them sold off!
On your previous response I was using EBAY as the boogy man variable. I realize what you say is correct regarding business model. The real deal would be anyone who would want to take on EBAY and eat their lunch in some manner. GOOGLE might have a path. They could monetize using their payment system and through adverts. They already have a stab at it with their product database. In addition they’d save all the indexing time with a direct tie into the database. I guess they might have to worry about being perceived as a competitor by other entities. Ok then how about YAHOO. In second place and with a languishing auctions unit….mmmm ….yes YAHOO. That’s the ticket.