EBay shutting down Kijiji in France
EBay has announced that from Aug. 16 Kijiji.fr will be shut down and its classifieds hosted on the parent site instead.
“This is a step in the rationalisation of the brand” explains Nathalie Touzain, Director of Communications for EBay France. “It’s a local strategic decision that only concerns France. In Canada, for example, Kijiji will continue to exist while in Germany it was shut down a year ago.”
French auto classifieds continue move to mobile
Autoscout24 and ParuVendu.fr have both announced new mobile applications.
“AutoScout to go” was launched as an iPhone app back in May 2009 since when it has been downloaded 400,000 times. That success has prompted the company to release an Android version in English, German, Spanish, Italian, and Dutch.
LeBonCoin.fr goes mobile
Leading French classifieds provider Spir Communication has just unveiled a version of its free-ads site LeBonCoin.fr optimised for mobile phones. The move is a bid to extend the site’s current reach of 11 million unique visitors per month viewing 300,000 new announces per day.
Spir chose mobile specialists Airweb to make the move to the new platform.
OuestFrance-auto.com sees 200% increase in ads
French regional newspaper giant Ouest France is celebrating the success of its switch to free-ads for its car classifieds with a facelift for the site.
Back in May the site announced that it would host free ads with photos for users’ cars for a two month period with the option of a €6 fee to include the ad in the paper edition. According to Ouest France, that led to a 200 percent increase in ads on the site by the first week.
SeLoger.com claims number of ads up 10%, visitors up 20%
Roland Tripard, MD of SeLoger.com says the number of ads on the site has risen by 10 percent over a few months with visitor numbers up 15 percent to 20 percent on this time last year. Continue reading
Paru Vendu goes online-only for Paris edition
French media group Hersant (owners of newspapers including Nice Matin, and France Antilles) has stopped the presses for the flagship Paris edition of classifieds paper Paru Vendu. The website www.paruvendu.fr is said to be continuing with business as usual.
Groupe Hersant is reported to have debts running at around the €200 million mark.
