In a big announcement, OLX has finally publicly announced that they just received a strategic investment from South African media conglomerate Naspers in the range of $20 to $40 million.  The full story by Leena Rao is over on TechCrunch, Naspers Makes Strategic Investment In Craigslist Competitor OLX

We’ve been hearing recently that South African media conglomerate and recent DST investor Naspers was sniffing around Crasiglist competitor OLX. Today, we confirmed with OLX co-founders Alec Oxenford and Fabrice Grinda that Naspers has made a strategic investment in the online classifieds company.

While Buenos Aires-based OLX is not disclosing the amount invested, we’ve heard from sources that the investment was in the range of $20 to $40 million. Naspers also bought out the shares of all of OLX’s previous investors, which include Nexus Venture Partners, The Founders Fund, DN Capital, General Catalyst Partners, and Bessemer Venture Partners. Prior to this round of funding, OLX had raised nearly $30 million.

While the free classifieds site has trouble competing with Craigslist in the U.S., OLX has a strong user base internationally, and is the current leader in Latin America and Asia. The company, which is seeing over 125 million unique visitors per month worldwide, has a presence in 90 countries in 40 languages.

In 2007 OLX has made an investment in Edeng.cn, a Chinese free classifieds site and acquired Mundoanuncio.com, a Craigslist-like classifieds site targeting the Hispanic market, in 2006. OLX also has a hold on the Philippines market thanks to a white label partnership with Friendster. And OLX scored a similar deal with social network hi5.

So why does Naspers want a stake in OLX? The conglomerate has been making a number of investments in the emerging Latin American market, including BrandsClub, Grupo Abril, Movile and Buscapé. According to a joint statement made by OLX and Naspers, the South African firm’s long-term, general strategy “is to acquire/establish a core internet community within a specific country/region and to then expand the operations by adding additional services such as e-commerce, communication, social networking, content and gaming.”

Via Marketing Conversation via TechCrunch. Disclosure: OLX is a client of Abraham Harrison

We’re all pretty excited about how well our client, Fabrice Grinda, and his online classifieds site, OLX, is doing. So well, in fact, that they just opened a new office in São Paulo, Brazil.  Kudos to the gang at OLX global and especially to the Latin American offices in Argentina and now Brazil.

Our Client, Global Classifieds Giant OLX Expands in Brazil

Huge Growth Expected in Leading Latin American Online Market

SAO PAULO, BRAZIL – (February 4, 2010) – OLX, already present online in 90 countries, has announced the opening of a new office in Brazil. OLX.com.br has grown by 450% in the last two years and already counts 14 million visits per month in Brazil, with more than 1 million published items. The online classifieds company expects continued strong growth, aiming for 20 millions visits per month in 2010.

“The new office complements OLX’s presence in Latin America and allows us to be closer to our local clients, create marketing action plans and provide better technical support and stronger client relationships,” says Rodrigo Ribeirão, head of operations of the new Brazilian unit. Through those efforts, OLX anticipates attracting an even bigger Brazilian customer base, advertising and buying and selling online.

OLX offers seven categories of ads: real estate; autos, motorcycles and boats; community; classes; jobs; meeting people and services. The market for autos, real estate and jobs has the highest demand, representing more than 1 million ads published in Brazil and around 40 million around the world.

OLX sees Brazil as a very promising market since the country already has 67 million internet users and 14 million of them visit the OLX.com.br site every month. “We see Brazil as one of the most attractive online markets in the world. With the largest and most mature online market in Latin America, our goal in having a local presence is to better understand the Brazilian internet user and adapt our products to the needs and preferences of the local buyer and seller. Furthermore, with the opening of the Brazilian office, we expect our local activities to grow by 175% in the next two years, reaching 3.5 million active ads on the site,” explains Alec Oxenford, founder and CEO of OLX.

About OLX

OLX is the next generation of free online classifieds. OLX is used in over 90 countries in 40 languages. The company was co-founded in March 2006 by Internet entrepreneurs Fabrice Grinda and Alec Oxenford. OLX is privately held. The company is based in New York, NY and Buenos Aires, Argentina and operates two leading online classifieds networks hosted at www.olx.com and www.mundoanuncio.com. For more information, visit: www.olx.com.br

CONTACT:

Fabrice Grinda
Co-CEO
OLX, Inc.
#(917) 371.5441
fabrice@olx.com

Huge Growth Expected in Leading Latin American Online Market

SAO PAULO, BRAZIL – (February 4, 2010) – OLX, already present online in 90 countries, has announced the opening of a new office in Brazil. OLX.com.br has grown by 450% in the last two years and already counts 14 million visits per month in Brazil, with more than 1 million published items. The online classifieds company expects continued strong growth, aiming for 20 millions visits per month in 2010.

“The new office complements OLX’s presence in Latin America and allows us to be closer to our local clients, create marketing action plans and provide better technical support and stronger client relationships,” says Rodrigo Ribeirão, head of operations of the new Brazilian unit. Through those efforts, OLX anticipates attracting an even bigger Brazilian customer base, advertising and buying and selling online.

OLX offers seven categories of ads: real estate; autos, motorcycles and boats; community; classes; jobs; meeting people and services. The market for autos, real estate and jobs has the highest demand, representing more than 1 million ads published in Brazil and around 40 million around the world.

OLX sees Brazil as a very promising market since the country already has 67 million internet users and 14 million of them visit the OLX.com.br site every month. “We see Brazil as one of the most attractive online markets in the world. With the largest and most mature online market in Latin America, our goal in having a local presence is to better understand the Brazilian internet user and adapt our products to the needs and preferences of the local buyer and seller. Furthermore, with the opening of the Brazilian office, we expect our local activities to grow by 175% in the next two years, reaching 3.5 million active ads on the site,” explains Alec Oxenford, founder and CEO of OLX.

About OLX

OLX is the next generation of free online classifieds. OLX is used in over 90 countries in 40 languages. The company was co-founded in March 2006 by Internet entrepreneurs Fabrice Grinda and Alec Oxenford. OLX is privately held. The company is based in New York, NY and Buenos Aires, Argentina and operates two leading online classifieds networks hosted at www.olx.com and www.mundoanuncio.com. For more information, visit: www.olx.com.br

CONTACT:

Fabrice Grinda
Co-CEO
OLX, Inc.
#(917) 371.5441
fabrice@olx.com

Abraham Harrison LLC

I have been busily collecting testimonials from our current and past clients and I just added a couple more just now on the Abraham Harrison website and I thought I would cross-post them over here for you to check out.

Colleen Fitzgerald, Director of Advocacy Implementation, Habitat for Humanity International

On behalf of Habitat for Humanity International (HFHI), thank you for your company’s pro bono work on World Habitat Day blogger outreach during the fall of 2009. We were astounded by the results achieved by Abraham and Harrison (A&H), and we appreciated your donation of staff time and resources.

Olivier Grinda, Co-Founder and CMO, BrandsClub

Abraham & Harrison has been doing a terrific job for brandsclub. Not only have they created and managed our twitter account, that has the most followers in the world for our business model, their outreaches have gotten us tons of responses. Last but not least they are always coming up with great suggestions and worldwide contacts for any crazy idea you might come up with. I would recommend them to anyone!

Francois Baird, Co-Chairman, Baird’s CMC

The dedicated team at Abrahamharrison assisted Baird’s CMC with new media outreach to create an international discussion about the Baird’s CMC report on the view of U.S. multi-nationals about investment in Africa. The results of their work were outstanding; leading to substantial coverage and vigorous debate. Abraham Harrison proved to be smart, responsive and highly effective.

Fabrice Grinda, Co-Founder and Co-CEO, OLX

It’s been a true pleasure working with the team at Abraham Harrison. They increased the online awareness of OLX far more than I thought would be possible with English, Spanish and Portuguese bloggers.

Jenny Morgenthau, Executive Director, The Fresh Air Fund

Abraham-Harrison tackled an extremely time-sensitive project for us and got up to speed quickly. We were impressed with their expertise in the industry, ability to execute a plan successfully and willingness to listen to our needs and goals. Their work has made an impact on our programs already and has given a tremendous boost to our awareness efforts.

Jerry White, Co-Founder and Director, Survivor Corps

Abraham & Harrison has been a critical catalyst for the online debut of SURVIVOR CORPS. They helped us create a blogging buzz around the launch of Survivor Corps, offering savvy counsel on strategically targeted audiences who would resonate with our mission. A&H cleverly leveraged the release of my book — I Will Not Be Broken: Five Steps to Overcoming a Life Crisis — to generate word of mouth promotion online and cultivate new supporters for our work to help survivors of war in the United States and abroad. Abraham & Harrison will jump into a campaign with passion and panache. They’ve been responsive to our needs and a pleasure to work with from day one.

Rebecca Milner, Vice President, Institutional Advancement, International Medical Corps

Abraham & Harrison has been a tremendous asset to International Medical Corps during our American Express Members Project campaign. Their online strategy and outreach helped introduce International Medical Corps to many new audiences and raised our visibility during this time-sensitive campaign. International Medical Corps was written about in more than 170 blog posts.

Abraham & Harrison brings a unique approach to online public relations. The worldwide web is a vast space, yet Abraham & Harrison has found a formula to reach out to target audiences, effectively raise awareness and get online readers and activists to take action.

The entire Abraham & Harrison team has been fantastic. Each team member brings creativity and passion to the cause. Without a doubt, International Medical Corps would engage Abraham & Harrison for another campaign.

Shari F. Leventhal, Partner, FireMedia Partners (Former CMO, the dear departed Firebrand)

With Chris Abraham’s audacious voice and mastery of a variety of blogs, feeds and social media networks, Abraham Harrison was instrumental in significantly raising the volume for Firebrand during its short but illustrious history.

Via Abraham Harrison and Marketing Conversation

People always ask me, “who is this Mark Harrison,” or “do you really need him?”  They even ask, “what does he do for the firm?”  I think there is a belief that any company worth its salt should have been started by a single, strong, founder — a Ford, if you will — and surge forward on the power of his single-minded vision.

Building a company is so much more than just that vision — it is much more than an idea, it is a creation that needs to be fed, maintained, grown, cultivated, and sustained.

When I started Abraham PR, I was a “single parent” but it wasn’t until Mark Harrison came on board around five-months in,  just about now three years ago, that we were able to start growing Abraham Harrison past a little consulting and digital PR practice into a proper company with 35 staff doing client service work in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, and Russian for global clients like OLX.

Our biggest client, OLX, is a case in point. Just today, Fabrice Grinda, co-founder of OLX, wrote The Power of Two: 2 > 1! in celebration of the entrepreneurial company of partners, which I have generously excerpted below — but it isn’t complete — I cut a lot out, so please, rather, go visit the original blog post yourself. (Via Marketing Conversation)

The Power of Two: 2 > 1! (Heavily Excerpted)

Looking at the most successful Internet and technology companies of the past few decades, it’s shocking to see how many have two or more founders: Google, Apple, Microsoft, Intel, Youtube, Skype, Yahoo to name a few all have multiple founders. Even Oracle which is closely associated with Larry Ellison has multiple founders. It’s much harder to come up with super successful Internet companies which only have one founder. Amazon and eBay seem to be the exception and Jeff Bezos is all the more exceptional as he is still CEO. The same applies to up and coming Internet companies which also seemingly all have multiple founders: Gilt, Yelp, Facebook and Twitter.

I would not have expected this result. Running a successful starting requires clear and rapid decision making: you ask everyone’s opinion and make an informed decision and assess its impact. If it’s a product decision, you A/B test the top few decisions and keep refining. There is no time to find the democratic consensus, the field is too dynamic and competitive and from experience the consensus decision is usually worse than an informed rapid decision followed by rigorous A/B testing with continuous refinement. I would have suspected that having multiple founders would slow down the decision making as the co-founders would have to agree on a decision before it gets taken.

Moreover, most marriages end in divorce. Why would it be any different for business relationships especially given the stress that the two partners are under and the financial stakes involved? In fact, I would have expected that companies with multiple founders to be more likely to fail than companies with one founder for that very reason as two disagreeing founders would tear the company apart.

If someone did the analysis, I would bet that companies with multiple founders are more likely to fail than companies with one founder, but when they succeed, they are more likely to succeed in a bigger way.

There are four reasons why having a partner might make a huge difference:

1. If you can’t convince your friends to join you, you probably should not be starting the business.

[...]

2.Being a startup founder is incredibly lonely and it’s great to have someone to pick you up when you are down and keep you grounded in reality when you become exuberant

[...]

3. It’s necessary to have a strategic sounding board

[...]

4. There is so much work to do, it’s good to have someone you completely trust to split it with

[...]

The conclusion is clear: if you are creating a startup get at least one partner!

[...]

Our client Fabrice Grinda was recently in Paris at LeWeb 09 after spending the last seven months abroad away from his New York City home. While at LeWeb, Loic Le Meur conducted a Fireside Chat with Fabrice Grinda, Co-CEO, OLX, Inc. Please check it out — it is the perfect representation of who Fabrice Grinda is and what his vision is for OLX.com both Internationally and in the United States. Plus, as a bonus, Fabrice is bombastic so he talks cold turkey about what it is like to do business in France, his home, versus in the United States; how simple-minded we indeed are as human creatures, and how much risk and suffering one really must go through to become an overnight success. Enjoy! Via the Fabrice Grinda Blog via Socialmedia.biz and Marketing Conversation.

Fabrice Grinda, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of OLX, popped me a testimonial for us at Abraham Harrison that is short and sweet and I am — we are — pretty proud of it.

“It’s been a true pleasure working with the team at Abraham Harrison. They increased the online awareness of OLX far more than I thought would be possible with English, Portuguese and Spanish bloggers.” — Fabrice Grinda, Co-Founder and Co-CEO, OLX

(Via Abraham Harrison and Marketing Conversation)

We at Abraham Harrison LLC are excited by the amazing coverage that OLX has been getting recently, especially since they’re our client and we’re responsible for their social media outreach and digital PR. I am especially blissed out that OLX made it into TechCrunch recently — Craigslist Competitor OLX Scores $5 Million For Online Classifieds — so please check it out and please be sure to read through the comments:

Craigslist Competitor OLX Scores $5 Million For Online Classifieds

OLX, the Craigslist for the rest of the world, has raised $5 million in funding from from Nexus Capital India. The company raised $13.5 million in Series B funding in April 2008 from General Catalyst Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, Founders Fund and DN Capital, bringing the total funding raised to $28.5 million. OLX raised $13.5 million in Series B funding in April 2008 from the same investors as above, and raised an undisclosed Series A round of $10 million in September 2006 with the same VCs and various angels participating.

While the free classifieds site has trouble competing with Craigslist in the U.S., OLX has a strong user base internationally. With a presence in more than 87 countries in 39 languages, OLX’s popularity lies mainly in Spain, India, Portugal, Mexico, South America, China, and the Philippines.

Fabrice Grinda, founder and CEO of OLX says the new investment will be used to make new acquisitions, implement site improvements, expand globally, and pursue aggressive marketing initiatives. In 2007 OLX has made an investment in Edeng.cn, a Chinese free classifieds site and acquired Mundoanuncio.com, a Craigslist-like classifieds site targeting the Hispanic market, in 2006. Much of its success in the Philippines can be attributed to its white label partnership with Friendster. Its offices are also spread over the globe with 125 employees (OLX has added almost 35 employees since last year) working in New York, Buenos Aires, Beijing, and Moscow.

While OLX may play second fiddle to Craigslist in the U.S., the site prides itself on being a second-generation free classifieds site, complete with Web 2.0 features such as social network widgets, better search capabilities, interactive maps, and mobile functionality. Craigslist has recently been under scrutiny by Attorney Generals over prostitution and the “Craigslist Murder” that have taken place in conjunction with the site. eBay’s Kijiji is also a competitor in the space, but Kijiji has set its sights on catching up to Craigslist in the U.S., even considering a name change.

Here’s the top-ten list we worked with our client OLX to create since the Interwebs loves it some top-ten lists:

1. OLX is 100% free forever – even for jobs and real estate
2. OLX has a fantastic mobile site where users can do everything they can do on the web
3. OLX is both global and hyper-local
4. OLX has a WYSIWYG editor allowing rich colorful postings without knowing HTML
5. OLX has direct support for video & images
6. OLX allows you to view listings in your local language
7. OLX has improved search – both across and within categories
8. You can search within a certain distance of your zip code
9. You can promote your listings on Facebook and other social networks
10. OLX has pictures in listing pages and search results

My client, Fabrice Grinda, of OLX has an amazing history of Entrepreneurship and success.  Last night, Fabrice sent along his latest blog post, The value of positive advisors, along to my team and me. I am posting it because it is important to read some truth, every once in a while, from someone who is both successful and honest about the really ugly challenges faced along the way. Please read it all the way through. Great sage advice for us small business owners and entrepreneurs.

The value of positive advisors

When you create a startup there are many people to discourage you. The most common refrain is “this idea will never work”. It was by far the most common thing I heard when creating Aucland and Zingy.

For Aucland, the French online auction site, their theory was as follows:

“Online auctions will never work in France. We don’t trade beanie babies like those crazy Americans. We don’t have a garage sale culture like you do in the US. Here people would not trust each other to send the right item. Besides, the Internet will never take off in France, we have the Minitel. Even if all of these barriers were miraculously removed, you could never make money because no one would ever pay by credit card online.”

For Zingy, it was similar: “Only those crazy Europeans and Asians buy ringtones. I can’t conceive of anyone using a ringtone, let alone paying for one.”

In both cases, the ideas panned out – with local variations. The categories that truly took off on Aucland were somewhat different than those which succeeded in the US – wine for instance was much more popular than beanie babies :) For ringtones, the idea also succeeded in the US, however a B2B approach (providing content to the carriers) ended up being the dominant approach for lack of premium SMS in the early stages of the market. In Europe, the B2C players dominated the market.

My friend Marc Simoncini faced similar concerns when he created Meetic, the Match.com equivalent of Europe. In 2001 people kept telling him: “online dating is for losers. I would never be caught dead on a dating site.” A few years later over a third of French singles were on the site.

And all three examples were ideas that had already been proven to work in other countries! Imagine what it must have been like for Sergei and Larry back in 1998: “Does the world need another search engine, we already have Yahoo and Alta Vista?” or for Steve and Chad: “There is no market for short form video” or even for Mark: “Social networks are useless – why would I want to be on one?”

The reality is that we humans have a hard time imagining circumstances or things we are not familiar with. As such we are not very good at predicting how we will react to new product or service. Given how inexpensive it has become to create a startup these days (both direct costs and opportunity costs have fallen), ignore the negative advice and just do it. Throw it on the wall and see if it sticks! Worse comes to worse, you will have had fun, tried something you wanted to do and learned a lot.

While it is key to mostly ignore negative advisors, it might be just as important to have and to listen to positive advisors. As entrepreneurs, we are often so busy dealing with the day to day operations, that we can miss the big picture. That’s why it’s great to have smart advisors to help you out with strategic decisions. They may be part of a formal structure – by being on your board or advisory board – or just friends or mentors whose opinion you value.

In 2003, after 2 years of toiling at Zingy, I considered selling it for $8 million. With Aucland, I had been working 100+ hours a week for 5 years in a row. I had 100% of my wealth tied up in the company – I could barely pay my personal rent. I was exhausted from dealing with stubborn music companies and cell phone operators who did not even understand it was in their best interest to sell ringtones. I had doubts about how defensible margins would be for intermediaries in the business. I had over 50% of the company and figured that making $4 million was not bad at 28.

It would have been a huge mistake. The company was on the verge of explosive growth, but after years of fighting in the trenches, I could not see it. Fortunately, my dad had kept abreast of our developments enough to see our progress and was far enough removed from the operations not to be bogged down by the operational difficulties we faced. He implored me not to sell the company. He went as far as to call my lawyer to tell him to delay the paperwork. His strategy worked. As I took a step back to look at things from his perspective, new buyout offers kept coming in. Ultimately I put all of them on hold until, 6 months later, an offer too large to refuse came along. I sold Zingy for $80 million. I was 29.

Thanks dad!

More recently, our board members at OLX, also urged Alec and I to take step back. The entire board meeting had been about what we had done in the past few months and what we planned to do in the coming months with all the glorious execution details. It only took one sentence to get us in the proper frame of mind: “Take all of the execution as granted. What will be the true driver of value?” The discussion that ensued might yet be the most valuable conversation we ever had.

Over the years, I have seen many great companies fail, while lesser ones were sold successfully. The difference between the two often came down to smart strategic decisions by those who were sold successfully. They read the market well, prepared themselves accordingly and timed their exit perfectly. By no means does this mean you should ignore execution. Executing well is both the single hardest thing for entrepreneurs to do and the greatest creator of competitive differentiation. However, make sure you have smart advisors to help you out on strategic decisions. They may make the difference between a good exit and a great exit!

I heard about OLX when I got on the phone with co-CEO and co-founder, Fabrice Grinda. He laughed and admitted that OLX is the largest free classifieds site no one’s ever heard of. He was right, no-one else I know have ever heard of OLX. Until now, OLX has played the back end to other sites. OLX was the engine behind the Friendster classifieds, for example, amongst many other.  OLX is now ready for prime time as it moves boldly into the United States in direct contest with monsters like Craigslist and EBay. This is a burgeoning David and Goliath story.

And, they’re rocking out abroad, with a presence in over 80 countries and over 30 languages. Until now, OLX has been a lot like David Hasselhoff, post-Baywatch and pre-America’s Got Talent: the Hoff is huge in Europe and so is OLX. And also in Brazil, China, Argentina, Chile, Russia, India, Poland, and others.

While we spoke, I farted around with the OLX site and quickly realized that OLX allowed me to search as geographically widely or as targeted as I wanted, based on city or zip code.

It was simple to search narrowly or broadly, by keyword or category, using check boxes and sliders. If there were too many results, I could slide it down to narrow the results; if there were too few, I could open increase the radius included in the search.

Craigslist limits its searches to cities and tight metro areas. Cities like Washington, DC, include Maryland and Northern Virginia, but not Baltimore or Richmond, although Baltimore is only 45-minutes away via the freeway.

But, no.  I have to pop in, and then pop out.  There have been attempts that 3rd party online services have made to allow federated search, but Craigslist keeps on shutting it down — because that’s what Craig Newmark of Craigslist does: makes arbitrary decisions that indulge his belief of what is right instead of what people might want and need. Like federated search, for example.

When I have some commerce to do, I have generally pointed by browser to one of three: Amazon, EBay, and Craigslist.  When I need something new, I’ll grab it on Amazon, but check EBay first.  When I am looking for something used, I will check EBay and Craigslist.  I will use Craigslist especially to grab something used if that thing is big, like furniture or a bike.

Sadly, there are too many limitations on all of these things and it really depends.

If I want a casual bike for weekend use spent with friends, that’s one thing, but if I am looking for a classic Kestrel carbon fiber criterion racer, it is much better to go further afield.  To me, Craigslist is best for people who are looking for deals or things that have become commoditized, such as refrigerators, mattresses, and couches.

If you’re looking for a replacement piece for a patter of china or if you’re looking for that 80s-era Porsche 911 you wanted in Highschool, you’ll need to go somewhere else, such as EBay.

OLX is flexible and easy-to-use, offering users — me — the sort of simple tools required to be able to fine-tune searches using check boxes, price limiters (high- and low-end), and sliders.  I can use it the way I want to, not the way the founders envision.

Same thing goes when it comes to mobile access.  In a world of mobile phones and mobile access, it is surprising that most online classifieds and auctioning sites limit their mobile access to just a couple of smart phones like the iPhone.  Well, I live on my Blackberry, my Nokia N95, and my soon-to-arrive Android G1, and there’s no way to buy and sell via mobile and Craigslist, EBay, and Amazon do not offer non phone-specific, non app-based, mobile WAP interfaces.  OLX offers access to all of its services via mobile, accessed via m.olx.com.

Mobile OLX doesn’t require an expensive iPhone to access the web interface or download an application, it can be accessed by any phone that can access the web at all, even lower-end phones that can only support very basical browsers.  Not only that, but I can easily continue my browsing and searching and listing from my mobile interface with a very similar experience to when I am at my desktop.

Also, there are lots of hidden fees, especially listing fees, hidden in real estate and jobs listings in Craigslist and, of course, listing fees on EBay — fees that have been growing for the last decade — the the point where loads of Power Sellers are getting skittish, wanting to pull their listings and find something else, something better.  OLX is completely free.  I dug further and there are premium listings available for a fee in the English/American market, but this isn’t restrictive, this is value-added. The premium listing fee is in addition, not a barrier to listing.

And, admit it, in the world of social media, social networks, and web2.0, Amazon, EBay, and Craigslist haven’t changed much in the last decade.

Then there’s the obvious and very annoying — and intentional –  limitations that man and ego, instead of service to customers, have implemented.

On the buyer’s side, on one hand, one of the most frustrating things about Craiglist is that each city is insulated from the other  — you just can’t search for the stuff you want country-wide; on the other hand, while EBay does allow you to search for stuff anywhere, it is an auction site so you need to be willing to bid or to Buy Now, which doesn’t lend itself to the sort of creativity and playfulness that Craigslist tends to produce.

To be honest, if I am searching for listing for things like cars and motorcycles, I want to expand my search to neighboring cities and states.  Hell, if I finally decide to buy that 1989 BMW R100GS Adventure Tourer, I am willing to search the entire country for one.  The perfect thing of my dreams does not want to necessarily be limited by geography or proximity.

For the perfect thing, I am sure I would go on a road trip or take a flight. A buddy of mine always wanted to own a Ferrari.  When he ultimately found the car he wanted to buy, it was almost three-thousand miles away in a barn, well-taken care of and just waiting for him, like a faerie tale.

Even searching for the perfect apartment can be taken to the perfect space, the perfect price, instead of just the perfect place.  How could that be, you ask?  Well, since I am a virtual worker, working for a virtual company, the quality of my home and the price of the rent or purchase could well be more important to me than whether the car is near the metro or bus line or is necessarily in metro Washington at all.

When I reread the above, I see a trend.  OLX seems to be a next-generation online classifieds site because it not only takes Craigslist into the 21st century but it also rolls in some of the great things about Ebay as well, such as the sophisticated tools that allow Ebay’s users to limit and expand searches, based on proximity and search terms, and whatnot.

Long story short, OLX isn’t revolutionary, it is evolutionary. Craigslist and its cousin Ebay are seriously stunted, unwilling to respond to the needs of its users.  “They don’t need that — they don’t even know what they need — why would they need to look outside of their city, this is about community, and I encourage community so I intent to block federated search from my classifieds site,” I can hear Craig Newmark saying to his board of directors.  Well, while Craig’s gloating, Fabrice is innovating, adjusting, evolving, and meeting the needs of his community.

And, when it all comes down to brass tacks, it is about making ends meet.  And when it comes to ends meeting, having more choice is better. More in better when it comes to value.  In one fell swoop, you can double and triple your reach into not only neighboring cities and states but further afield.

In fact, when you look at Craigslist and see how picked-over all of the listings are by the time I get to it, I should think that OLX is a competitive advantage since it is — for now, anyway — the largest free classifieds site no one’s ever heard of, OLX is an undiscovered gem.  OLX is like discovering an undiscovered flea market, second-hand store, or consignment store.

All said and done, this is not about revolution or paradigm shifting but it is about bringing buyer to seller and seller to buyer. It is about community and commerce.  It is about making connections as completely and as easily as possible in exactly the way that makes it easiest for everyone involved and I honestly believe that OLX fills that bill, be they my client or not.

I heard about OLX when I got on the phone with co-CEO and co-founder, Fabrice Grinda. He laughed and admitted that OLX is the largest free classifieds site no one’s ever heard of. He was right, no-one else I know have ever heard of OLX. Until now, OLX has played the back end to other sites. OLX was the engine behind the Friendster classifieds, for example, amongst many other.  OLX is now ready for prime time as it moves boldly into the United States in direct contest with monsters like Craigslist and EBay. This is a burgeoning David and Goliath story.

And, they’re rocking out abroad, with a presence in over 80 countries and over 30 languages. Until now, OLX has been a lot like David Hasselhoff, post-Baywatch and pre-America’s Got Talent: the Hoff is huge in Europe and so is OLX. And also in Brazil, China, Argentina, Chile, Russia, India, Poland, and others.

While we spoke, I farted around with the OLX site and quickly realized that OLX allowed me to search as geographically widely or as targeted as I wanted, based on city or zip code.

It was simple to search narrowly or broadly, by keyword or category, using check boxes and sliders. If there were too many results, I could slide it down to narrow the results; if there were too few, I could open increase the radius included in the search.

Craigslist limits its searches to cities and tight metro areas. Cities like Washington, DC, include Maryland and Northern Virginia, but not Baltimore or Richmond, although Baltimore is only 45-minutes away via the freeway.

But, no.  I have to pop in, and then pop out.  There have been attempts that 3rd party online services have made to allow federated search, but Craigslist keeps on shutting it down — because that’s what Craig Newmark of Craigslist does: makes arbitrary decisions that indulge his belief of what is right instead of what people might want and need. Like federated search, for example.

When I have some commerce to do, I have generally pointed by browser to one of three: Amazon, EBay, and Craigslist.  When I need something new, I’ll grab it on Amazon, but check EBay first.  When I am looking for something used, I will check EBay and Craigslist.  I will use Craigslist especially to grab something used if that thing is big, like furniture or a bike.

Sadly, there are too many limitations on all of these things and it really depends.

If I want a casual bike for weekend use spent with friends, that’s one thing, but if I am looking for a classic Kestrel carbon fiber criterion racer, it is much better to go further afield.  To me, Craigslist is best for people who are looking for deals or things that have become commoditized, such as refrigerators, mattresses, and couches.

If you’re looking for a replacement piece for a patter of china or if you’re looking for that 80s-era Porsche 911 you wanted in Highschool, you’ll need to go somewhere else, such as EBay.

OLX is flexible and easy-to-use, offering users — me — the sort of simple tools required to be able to fine-tune searches using check boxes, price limiters (high- and low-end), and sliders.  I can use it the way I want to, not the way the founders envision.

Same thing goes when it comes to mobile access.  In a world of mobile phones and mobile access, it is surprising that most online classifieds and auctioning sites limit their mobile access to just a couple of smart phones like the iPhone.  Well, I live on my Blackberry, my Nokia N95, and my soon-to-arrive Android G1, and there’s no way to buy and sell via mobile and Craigslist, EBay, and Amazon do not offer non phone-specific, non app-based, mobile WAP interfaces.  OLX offers access to all of its services via mobile, accessed via m.olx.com.

Mobile OLX doesn’t require an expensive iPhone to access the web interface or download an application, it can be accessed by any phone that can access the web at all, even lower-end phones that can only support very basical browsers.  Not only that, but I can easily continue my browsing and searching and listing from my mobile interface with a very similar experience to when I am at my desktop.

Also, there are lots of hidden fees, especially listing fees, hidden in real estate and jobs listings in Craigslist and, of course, listing fees on EBay — fees that have been growing for the last decade — the the point where loads of Power Sellers are getting skittish, wanting to pull their listings and find something else, something better.  OLX is completely free.  I dug further and there are premium listings available for a fee in the English/American market, but this isn’t restrictive, this is value-added. The premium listing fee is in addition, not a barrier to listing.

And, admit it, in the world of social media, social networks, and web2.0, Amazon, EBay, and Craigslist haven’t changed much in the last decade.

Then there’s the obvious and very annoying — and intentional –  limitations that man and ego, instead of service to customers, have implemented.

On the buyer’s side, on one hand, one of the most frustrating things about Craiglist is that each city is insulated from the other  — you just can’t search for the stuff you want country-wide; on the other hand, while EBay does allow you to search for stuff anywhere, it is an auction site so you need to be willing to bid or to Buy Now, which doesn’t lend itself to the sort of creativity and playfulness that Craigslist tends to produce.

To be honest, if I am searching for listing for things like cars and motorcycles, I want to expand my search to neighboring cities and states.  Hell, if I finally decide to buy that 1989 BMW R100GS Adventure Tourer, I am willing to search the entire country for one.  The perfect thing of my dreams does not want to necessarily be limited by geography or proximity.

For the perfect thing, I am sure I would go on a road trip or take a flight. A buddy of mine always wanted to own a Ferrari.  When he ultimately found the car he wanted to buy, it was almost three-thousand miles away in a barn, well-taken care of and just waiting for him, like a faerie tale.

Even searching for the perfect apartment can be taken to the perfect space, the perfect price, instead of just the perfect place.  How could that be, you ask?  Well, since I am a virtual worker, working for a virtual company, the quality of my home and the price of the rent or purchase could well be more important to me than whether the car is near the metro or bus line or is necessarily in metro Washington at all.

When I reread the above, I see a trend.  OLX seems to be a next-generation online classifieds site because it not only takes Craigslist into the 21st century but it also rolls in some of the great things about Ebay as well, such as the sophisticated tools that allow Ebay’s users to limit and expand searches, based on proximity and search terms, and whatnot.

Long story short, OLX isn’t revolutionary, it is evolutionary. Craigslist and its cousin Ebay are seriously stunted, unwilling to respond to the needs of its users.  “They don’t need that — they don’t even know what they need — why would they need to look outside of their city, this is about community, and I encourage community so I intent to block federated search from my classifieds site,” I can hear Craig Newmark saying to his board of directors.  Well, while Craig’s gloating, Fabrice is innovating, adjusting, evolving, and meeting the needs of his community.

And, when it all comes down to brass tacks, it is about making ends meet.  And when it comes to ends meeting, having more choice is better. More in better when it comes to value.  In one fell swoop, you can double and triple your reach into not only neighboring cities and states but further afield.

In fact, when you look at Craigslist and see how picked-over all of the listings are by the time I get to it, I should think that OLX is a competitive advantage since it is — for now, anyway — the largest free classifieds site no one’s ever heard of, OLX is an undiscovered gem.  OLX is like discovering an undiscovered flea market, second-hand store, or consignment store.

All said and done, this is not about revolution or paradigm shifting but it is about bringing buyer to seller and seller to buyer. It is about community and commerce.  It is about making connections as completely and as easily as possible in exactly the way that makes it easiest for everyone involved and I honestly believe that OLX fills that bill, be they my client or not.