Craigslist has outlasted its challengers, and remains the platform to beat for classifieds, or “things to sell” marketplaces. eBay, similarly, remains a leader for the sale of goods – although most are not geographically oriented. Amazon is also active in that space.

Can Facebook, with its huge volume and trust networks, cut into their business? It is going to try via a new “For Sale” offering that allow users of its groups to post items for sale. Items are listed with prices, photos, descriptions, pick-up location and prices. They can also be listed as “available” or “sold” to let buyers know what’s still on the market/

The listings are currently free — and probably won’t go into the paid areas that provide the bulk of Craigslist’s revenue: apartments, cars, jobs and “personal services.” But if Facebook decides to provide a greater emphasis on classifieds, it could conceivably move into transactions (and commissions). It could also open the service up beyond its groups to have more of a geo-orientation.

It isn’t the first time that Facebook has been used for classifieds. Oodle, a large classifieds platform that launched in 2005, took over a nascent Facebook classifieds service in 2008 and focused on Facebook’s huge scale to offer items for sale to friends and groups within the service. Oodle was sold to QVC several years ago.

It also isn’t the first time that online groups have been used for classifieds. In their heydays, Yahoo Groups and Big Tent — each with hundreds of thousands of users — had active lists of classifieds. Many associations and groups currently host classifieds on their websites and pages.

The classifieds project is the latest transaction-oriented effort from Facebook, which may want to diversify its revenue beyond advertising. Facebook has been experimenting with various transaction models for several years, including tests with virtual gift cards, deals and virtual currencies. Facebook has also developed an Amazon-like capability to enable transactions on other sites by collecting credit card information on its profiles.

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Priceline is sort of like eBay — a company known for its origins in auctions, but more recently focusing on distinct, “buy it now” niches. It has recently fleshed out its core travel brand by moving up the value chain to travel reservations via its acquisition of Kayak. It has also gotten into the “sharing economy” by adding AirBnB-like private listings to its Booking.com brand, which is an international powerhouse.

Today, Priceline added restaurant reservations and search to its stable via the $2.6 Billion purchase of industry leader OpenTable, which works with 31,000 restaurants — mostly high end white table cloth restaurants willing to pay a hefty premium for reservations management and leads to undecided consumers. Open Table is an international leader with strong customer bases in the U.S., U.K., Germany, Japan and Mexico.

For Priceline, the most attractive parts of the deal are probably OpenTable’s 15 million, high end, travel-oriented customers; the company’s verified, high quality restaurant reviews; OpenTable’s strong mobile orientation; and its extensive affiliate network with 600+ local and vertical sites, which receive commissions for sending traffic to OpenTable (and accounting for 5-10 percent of OpenTable’s business.) These networks might be extended to include other Priceline properties.

There is probably some disconnect with OpenTable’s high-end customer base and Priceline’s discount set — most OpenTable customers won’t be using Priceline itself. And an effort to extend OpenTable’s feature set with Groupon-like deals proved to be underwhelming (although the company has maintained an extensive and apparently successful “Dining Checques” loyalty program). Many OpenTable customers are also not using the service in travel mode — they are local.

Still, OpenTable customers might use the other services. And the seamless Priceline app experience could also be applied as mobile becomes a paramount factor for all travel services.

A larger question we’d have is the core of OpenTable’s value proposition for restaurants: the reservations management system, which is based on dedicated customer premise equipment (known as The Electronic Reservations Book.) The average ERB using restaurant pays $249 for the service (plus $1.00 per seated diner using the OpenTable system.) But in the age of tablet-based POS and reservations services using WiFI, OpenTable’s proprietary system would seem threatened.

So far, it has held its own against such tablet-oriented companies as UrbanSpoon‘s Rez and Groupon‘s Breadcrumb — OpenTable’s base of customers is too strong to quickly turn off. OpenTable itself is preparing for a transition. Yet, it has been developing a Cloud Based program that charge a $2.49 per diner charge.

Structurally, we also ask ourselves whether OpenTable is in a distinct “high end restaurant reservations silo,” where it now sits; or whether it is really part of a developing “food silo” that is based on search and discovery, would also include reviews; restaurant and fastfood delivery (i.e. GrubHub), grocery delivery (Amazon Fresh, Google) and reviews (Yelp.) Priceline might be positioning itself to be in the right of the middle of these conjoining elements. (then again… the new silo might ultimately be oriented more around delivery).

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eBay generally focuses on helping things get sold. But it has never had a “wanted” section. Now it has tipped its toes into “wanted” via a new partnership between eBay Classifieds and Rewarder.

Rewarder, a San Francisco-based expert network, was founded two years ago by former Intuit/StepUp executive Kendall Fargo and backed by Granite Ventures. It has recently been written up by my colleague Mike Boland. The network now has 750,000 experts, who “have a passion for helping people , but don’t want to do it for free,” says Fargo. “It’s an extension of the ‘sharing economy'” pioneered by AirBnB, Uber and others, he suggests.

While there are plenty of free expert resources, they don’t provide you with the detail you need, and they are not a personal solution, Fargo says. Things you want to own, such as cars and products, receive the most “wanted” queries. And the queries are very sharable via social media and other sources.

Mobile also plays a big role in the network. A lot of it is impulse. More than 200,000 people are using the mobile app. Would I use it to find a cat hotel during a car trip this summer? No. That’s more of a social survey. But you’d use it to learn how to start a cat hotel.

Here’s how it works: Rewarder receives the query, including reward amount; sends out alerts to the expert solution; and sends out a payment to the winning solution. Rewards vary widely but many are in the $10 to $50 range. A reward for finding a lost poodle was posted for $100. Another person posted a $50 reward for building a travel itinerary for Sydney, Australia. More than $14 Million worth of rewards are currently posted.

Fargo notes that 30 percent of queries are settled within six hours. “It is a matching and mashing system,” he says.

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Local is front and center in the next phase of ecommerce opening up, said eBAY VP of Marketplaces Jody Ford during a keynote address Dec. 10 at Leading in Local: Interactive Local Media in San Francisco. Ford said the past several years have been about online service, inventory and convenience and have necessarily favored online sites such as Amazon. But a new era of commerce that is consumer driven and technology enabled will blur the lines between online and offline.

“That is local,” said Ford. “There will be more retail change in the next three years than in the past twenty years.” And it will necessarily favor “platform” companies such as eBay, which Ford boasts has “the largest group of closed loop transactions in the world served by eBay, eBay Enterprises and PayPal.”

“My job is to remove friction from connecting buyers and sellers,” he said. In fact, eBay “sits in the middle between utility sites such as Amazon and Walmart, and social shopping sites such as Etsy, Pinterest and Fab,” he said.

The company’s next steps include such efforts as same day, scheduled delivery via eBay Now, which is supported by eBay’s recent acquisition of the Shutl courier service. eBay Now has been rolled out in the Bay Area, Chicago and parts of New York City. Dallas and London are next.

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The clock is ticking!  We are just one month from Leading in Local: Interactive Local Media, which is Dec. 10-12 in San Francisco. The event has shaped up to be the most exciting local event in recent memory – a 2 1/2 day extravaganza that focuses on local:  The Internet’s last and biggest frontier.

We’ve already announced a powerful lineup of 48 speakers, including local leaders at Google, Facebook, Go Daddy, eBay, Groupon, Hubspot, Intuit; and major thinkers and leaders, including Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom, AllThings D‘s Kara Swisher and Startup Rising author Chris Schroeder.

Want more? We have some exciting new confirms.

• Amit Kumar, VP, and Head of SMB, Yahoo. Kumar is set to brief attendees on Yahoo’s local and SMB initiatives under CEO Marissa Meyer.
• Ralf VonSosen, Marketing Leader, LinkedIn. VonSosen is set to discuss LinkedIn’s approach to leveraging its vast network for marketing
• Joel Hughes, SVP, Constant Contact. Hughes joins SureFire Social’s  Chris Marentis to discuss ways to make social media really powerful for local.
• Jeff Folckemer, President, Local Edge. Folckemer joins a great Digital Agency session and will provide insight into Hearst’s view of what really works.
• Anna Zornosa, President, Ruby Rails. Zornosa, the longtime industry leader with prior stints at Knight Ridder Digital, Dealix and Women.com joins our special Women Leading in Local networking session.

Of course, it isn’t just about what’s on stage. We are staging the San Francisco edition of our Future Stars contest, which rewards talented local startups; and not one, but TWO great precon tours set. A limited number of attendees will be visiting with Yelp at its brand new headquarters in the historic PacBell building; another group will be meeting a super group of Bay Area startups at WeWork. More info on signing up is coming.

Will we see you in San Francisco?   Register here:

We’ll be touring Yelp’s new headquarters.

The post Leading Execs From Yahoo, LinkedIn, Constant Contact Added to Interactive Local Media (San Francisco, Dec. 10-12) appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

How can you constantly top yourself? It is a challenge that leaders have, in whatever endeavor they are pursuing: whether it is sports, literature, academia, or business.

We are pretty sure this year’s Interactive Local Media event – BIA/Kelsey’s flagship – is going to top any other event we’ve done before.

The event’s handpicked keynotes, superforums and BIA/Kelsey research really do define the state of Interactive Local Media for 2013-14. We’ve just added Brian Boland, Facebook‘s VP of Product. Facebook is all over local advertising and commerce in ways that are obvious – and not so obvious. We can’t wait to hear his insights.

Other industry leaders we’ve added include eBay Marketplaces VP Jody Ford, who is helping lead the charge as eBay goes big in local (and against Amazon); and Go Daddy CEO Blake Irving, the visionary leader who is building a comprehensive platform to leverage GoDaddy’s 8 million SMB customers. Talk about disruption!

Kicking off the conference, of course, are two of the best: San Francisco Chronicle President Joanne Bradford and AllThings D Co-Executive Editor Kara Swisher. The insights don’t come deeper or faster.

And at LIL:ILM, it isn’t just about the “industry.” On Day 2, we are especially proud to be joined by Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom, the political superstar (and ex San Francisco Mayor) who has focused on tech’s impact on local (see his new book, “Citizenville”).

The Lt. Governor will also introduce Chris Schroeder, the former Washington Post Newsweek Digital chief who has written this year’s top books on start up developments, Startup Rising. Attendees can jockey for signed copies that we’ll be handing out.

Other major speakers at the conference include Groupon VP Sean Smyth; Weather Company VP Denise Chudhy; Hubspot SVP Mark Roberge; and Intuit/DemandForce CMO Patrick Barry. They’ll join 40+ speakers and hundreds of attendees at what is truly “the industry’s largest gathering.”

What else? We have a special tour of Yelp headquarters before the event even begins. More info on that a little later on. Hey, does it sound G-R-E-A-T? We hope to see you in San Francisco!

You can register here.

The post Facebook, eBay, GoDaddy, Lt. Gov Join Leading in Local: ILM (Dec. 10-12 San Francisco) appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

When eBay purchased Jack Abraham’s Milo.com in December 2010, it caused some head scratching. While retail Inventory is helpful to track goods availability and has some value in developing location-based promotions, it seemed an unlikely anchor for eBay’s SMB and local ecommerce services.

Abraham’s upgrade of his title to head of EBay Local last year, however, indicated that changes were afoot. And this week, eBay has finally unveiled the fruit of his labors: eBay Now, a same day delivery service that builds on inventory to take it to the next logical step.

The service, following in the footsteps of first generation local services such as Kozmo.com and UrbanFetch, has launched in San Francisco with BestBuy, Bloomingdales, Nordstrom, Target, ToysRUs and Walgreen. It is mostly aimed at luring major merchant accounts to eBay’s broad range of merchant services.

Deliveries are $5 and available for orders over $25 from 9-9 during the week, and from 9-6 on Sunday. Three free deliveries per customer are available during the test. Other Milo customers that might jumpo in include Home Depot, Ikea, Lowe’s, Sears and J.C. Penney.

Strategically, eBayNow positions eBay against other ecommerce heavyweights seeking to provide a suite of etail services, from promotions to search to transactions to hosting…specifically Amazon (although Amazon indicated this week that it will not be providing a similar service.) Long-term, Google and others that are developing transaction marketing services could also compete. Uber, the Web-based limo reservations service, is also experimenting with delivery, although it isn’t clear whether the limited delivery services that have been introduced are merely meant to promote the limo service while cars sit empty.

The post The Return of Same Day Delivery via EBay Now appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Inventory hasn’t yet emerged as a “must have” for merchants, but the strategic importance of tracking store inventory remains undiminished. Merchants will potentially use inventory levels to drive users to specific locations, build promotions to get rid of overage (or remove promotions when supplies are running low).

While far from universal, many national retailers are beginning to use various inventory services, including eBay’s Milo.com, Gannett’s ShopLocal, Local Corp.’s Krillion, Wishpond , Sale Locator, Retailigence and various other services.

EBay’s purchase of Milo.com in December 2010 as an anchor for its eBay Local unit really caught our attention. We caught up with founder and eBay Local head Jack Abraham this week.

Abraham sees a world where Web product search and physical store visits converge. “You’ll make your decision on the Web to come into the store,” he says. Three key areas being targeted for inventory-based marketing include electronics, home & garden and apparel. Each of these areas not only relate to product sales, but possible service extensions as well, such as for contractors.

The move toward inventory-based marketing, however, is happening slower than Abraham would like. Nevertheless, he cites a growing number of relationships, and remains confident that it will happen, perhaps via media partnerships. A Milo deal with Find n Save, the shopping product from eight major newspaper companies, is a start in this direction.

Meanwhile, Abraham is seeking to leverage eBay’s role as a tech partner for both national and local merchants, comparing eBay favorably to Amazon, with which it has an increased rivalry. “Unlike Amazon, there is someone on their side that wants to help them,” and who “reaches them at the decision point,” says Abraham.

While Amazon Stores has a huge body of merchant customers, it has recently run afoul of some merchants with its price comparisons feature. Indeed, some merchants believe that working with Amazon is a Trojan horse likely to end up driving customers to its own site. EBay doesn’t have warehouses” to sell goods against merchants, notes Abraham.

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John Donahoe, eBay CEO and interim PayPal CEO, projected soaring numbers for new mobile payment forecasts. During his keynote speech at the Consumer Electronics Association, Donahoe predicted that eBay would reach $8 billion in mobile gross merchandise volume (GMV) this year, almost double its $5 billion GMV we reported from last year. Reasons for the growth include a growing acceptance of mobile commerce, a surge in iPad use for mobile payments, and new apps that blend offline and online capabilities.

PayPal’s projected numbers look even better at $7 billion, a 75 percent increase over last year. 2011 was still a good year for the online payment company as it surpassed its $3.5 billion expectations to reach $4 billion in mobile payments. Although its sales are rising twice as fast as eBay’s, PayPal Chief Scientist Moh Ok told our audience at ILM West that both companies are “laser focused” on commerce.

Donahoe also announced its new strategic partnership with eBay’s RedLaser barcode scanning app — Best Buy. Last year, the app was updated to include PayPal and Milo integration that gives users the ability to buy on the spot for either in-store pickup or at-home delivery. EBay is expected to post 57 cents a share in earnings on $3.32 billion in revenues during its Q4 earnings call next week.

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The events listings space has taken a number of twists and turns with Zvents trying to steer people to retail events as a business model, and also become a media driver in its own right; Eventful focusing more and more on Hollywood studios and TV shows to drive viral demand for their entertainment properties; GoldStar focusing on quiet, sophisticated events; and others focusing on social media and transaction hybrids.

Not everything has worked out as planned. Today, Zvents announced that it has been sold to eBay’s StubHub. For StubHub, which is a reseller/scalper of events, it will get a chance to work Zvents’ list of events from 140,000+ local marketers and promoters. Typically, 60,000 events are listed at any one time.

It — along with other eBay properties — may also seek to do more with Zvents’ large network of newspaper partners. But that would likely be a second phase, if ever.

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