My Own Pirate Radio

Mark Evans writes in “Web 2.0: Post-Newsweek Thoughts”,

Me: “So what’s Kijiji’s business model? How does it make money?”
Them: “We don’t have a business model. Everything on the site is free.”
Me: “Oh, then I guess Kijiji is a real Web 2.0 company.”
For months, I’ve been ranting about how the lack of viable business models within all these cool Web 2.0 services/applications is a huge and troubling problem. How can you create a business if the service is given away free?

It is odd, but it makes more sense when you look at the company ownership. eBay owns 25% of Craigslist, and wholly owns Kijiji. eBay is not in the same class as the so-called Web 2.0 companies. Very different motivations and much deeper pockets. Read the rest of this entry »