MySpace and Oodle today announced that MySpace’s classifieds section has been re-launched and is now powered by Oodle. The MySpace Classifieds section highlights ads from MySpace users, but also features listings from other Oodle powered sites as well as from other sites Oodle scrapes for listings. Interestingly, Facebook announced a cooperation with Oodle back in 2007, only to then have Facebook launch its own Marketplace just a few days later.
This partnership with MySpace gives Oodle access to a large new group of users. According to MySpace, its classifieds see about 1 million visits a month and with Oodle, its inventory is going to go up to 500,000 new listings a day.
The new classifieds section is also going to make better use of MySpace’s social tools, allowing users to target their MySpace friends for their listings. This social aspect is what can give classifieds on MySpace (or any social network for that matter) a competitive advantage over Craigslist. At the same time, though, it’s noteworthy, as Caroline McCarthy also points out, that Facebook’s classifieds section has never quite become an important service on the site.
The only classifieds sites Oodle doesn’t scrape are Craigslist and Kijiji. The relationship between Craiglist and Oodle has been especially rocky, as we reported here. By basically providing a meta-search service, Oodle relies less on its own active users to provide a comprehensive service.
The most advanced features of the MySpace integration, however, only work for ads posted by MySpace users themselves. Right now, there are not too many active listings posted by MySpace users, yet. However, as these ads start making their way onto users’ profiles, using MySpace Classifieds for ads could easily become a viral phenomenon on MySpace.
