Oodle Debuts Local Classifieds
Online classifieds listing service Oodle launched a beta version yesterday of its free classifieds service in Chicago, Dallas and Philadelphia.Oodle, San Francisco, lets users search all major sources for local classifieds listings in their area, including their region's major newspaper, Craigslist, eBay, sites such as Monster.com and Cars.com, and smaller suburban newspapers.
"By making it easy to get a single view of the entire market of local listings, Oodle will attract more buyers to online classifieds," CEO Craig Donato said.
In addition, Oodle's search technology categorizes listings to help users find exactly what they are looking for. For example, users can click on breed, gender and color to find the right pet listing. Unlike other online classifieds services, Donato said, Oodle focuses on making listings easy for the buyer to find products instead of concentrating solely on the advertiser's needs.
"To date, innovations associated with online classifieds have been focused on the advertiser, making listings cheaper and easier to place," he said.
Though the listings are currently free for advertisers, Oodle plans to add enhanced listing options so classifieds listing companies such as Craigslist could pay more to call out their listings.
"We can send them free traffic but also send them enhanced merchandising offerings [in the future]," Donato said.
Oodle expects to roll out 12 sites in other cities this year.
