Pretty much everything is going social these days and getting a kick of real-time – whether it’s for discovering music via Playlistnow or following stocks via StockTwits, etc. Everyone’s adding a social layer to their existing platforms and integrating some forms of real-time services- and one of the latest to go this route is Yakaz, who has just announced that its launching real-time social classified ads.
The new platform of the Paris-based company is in many ways not that different from Facebook’s MarketPlace – even visually, the interface looks a bit like a Craigslist-meets-your-Facebook homepage, chat included. The minute you see an ad for something you’re interested in, you can immediately contact the seller online and proceed with the purchase. Of course it’s possible to look up items from the past, but Yakaz is assuming that the real-time aspect will also translate into faster selling. Still, ads that currently appear on the 1st page of San Francisco listings include items that were posted between 4 and 18 hours ago. Guess that’s still better than yesterday.
Honestly, the real-time aspect isn’t really that different from what Twitter-based Twitlistings or even mobile-based Antengo and BlockChalk are going after. But what’s nice about this new version is that Yakaz is really stiving to facilitate transactions – whether they be buying, selling, renting or whathaveyou (just no dating for the moment) – not only via real-time but by enabling users to build their own trusted networks. Obviously, if users seek only to buy and rent things from their own personal networks, their options become more limited – which is perhaps why Yakaz also recommends additional people to add based on your existing connections and user ratings.
All ads posted on the new platform are limited to 280 characters (2x the length of a tweet) to keep ads short and sweet. And you won’t have to go bothering yourself with tags or whatnot – Yakaz automatically recognizes various keywords and places your ad in the appropriate categories.
Yakaz is definitely not the only French startup to be attacking the real-time classifieds space either. RemixJobs, a brand new startup co-founded by famous French tech blogger, Korben, is going strictly after real-time job listings for the tech industry. But RemixJobs looks much more like a specialized Twitter and far less like Yakaz’s Facebook-inspired model.
If you’d like to have a look at what the new Yakaz platform looks like, the 15-person team is releasing the new version in 50 languages from the get go. The startup founded in 2005 currently counts some 15 million monthly uniques on all its previous sites (limited previously to 10 countries, now available in 190). So, is this goodbye, Craigslist ?
