By Katja Riefler
BARCELONA. What a crowd gathered last week in Barcelona! More than 67,000 visitors from 205 countries roamed the halls of the 2012 GSMA Mobile World Congress, a new record for the four-day conference and exhibition. Attendance was up by 11 percent compared to last year’s event, more than 1,500 companies exhibited. Device makers, suppliers and operators dominated the show, but as usual there were trends to discover that might become vital to classified portals and publishers in the not too far future. The overall progress in the mobile industry within the last years has indeed been “mind boggling”, as Hans Vestberg, CEO of Ericsson, put it during his keynote on the networked society. Anything that can connect will connect in the future, he said. In a world were human bodies can serve as a cable and transmit Continue reading →

By Katja Riefler
Two important news from Polish Agora S.A. at the end of the year.
First: the big Polish publishing company that owns the country’s biggest national quality newspaper Gazeta as well as established classified websites like gazetapraca.pl (jobs) and gazetadom.pl (real estate) has taken a minority stake in goldenline.pl, a social networking site dedicated to work and career in Poland (read the press release here). In October 2011 goldenline had 1.9 million users. In November 2011 it had introduced employer ratings.
Second: Tomasz Jozefacki, member of the management board since November 2008 and head of Agora’s Internet Division is leaving the company. He started his career with Agora in September 2004 as the Director of Local Branches of “Gazeta Wyborcza” and in April 2006 took the position of the Director of Development. Since December 2008 he has been the President of Online Publishers Association Europe. It’s not clear yet why Josefacki is leaving and what his future plans are. We wish him good luck! (read the company statement here).

By Katja Riefler

Already in June 2011 we reported that South African media and e-commerce group Naspers is about to buy eastern European free classified website Slando.com through it’s subsidiary Myriad Internet Holdings (MIH) – now it’s official. Slando’s founders Michael Pennington and Simon Crookall according to Reuters confirmed today that the transaction has been completed. Naspers took over the founder’s shares as well as the 20 percent that formerly belonged to EBay Inc. It now owns 100 percent of Slando. Financial details of the deal weren’t disclosed.

Slando is being said to have 11 million users in Russia and Eastern Europe and 1.5 million adverts were posted on its websites in July. According to Nasper’s company website the agreement to acquire Slando the agreement to acquire Russia’s 3rd largest general classified business and the market leader in Ukraine has already been signed 9 May 2011.

Pennington and Crookall set up Slando in 2006. Users can post adverts on it for everything from property sales to dating and jobs. The London-based site is active in 10 Eastern Europe countries, Portugal and Brazil. Prior to Slando the pair had launched Gumtree in 2000. They sold it to EBay in 2005.

According to the newspaper Kommersant-Ukraine Naspers now is the most influential online classified company in Ukraine. It does not only own with Slando.com.ua one of the largest free classified websites, but also the auction portal aukro.ua and parts of emarket.ua and ria.ua. Slando employs 15 people. The headquarters of Slando shall remain in London, but regional offices shall be opened in Ukraine. Pennington and Crookall will stay on to oversee the integration over the next six months.