Craigslist or Kijiji? Which do you prefer?

Craigslist is much better than competitor Kijiji. Craigslist.org CEO Jim Buckmaster, left, and founder Craig Newmark

Shopping for used items instead of paying for the same new item can save you a lot of money. Two popular online resources here in Toronto, Ontario, Canada are Craigslist and Kijiji. Though I peruse specific sections of both I prefer Craigslist. Both Craigslist and Kijiji allow sellers to advertise goods and for buyers to contact sellers. I have bought goods from both sites. I find that Craigslist is so much more aligned with social media, and Kijiji is more traditional seller pushed want ads. The difference might be subtle but enough to add its own flavour.

Craigslist is more militant about double posting and posts by defacto companies. The user community or readership can send feedback to Craigslist that a post is a repeat or miscategorized. If enough people do this the posting will be removed. This happens often. One feels empowered using Craigslist, and somewhat responsible for the upkeep of your favourite section. Once in a while a seller will post a complaint that his ad should not be removed, only for the complaint to be voted down and summarily removed by the Craigslist readership. Majority rules, my friend. Often someone will post about a Craigslist scam to warn others. There have been open postings to seller complaining that their asking prices are much too high. There is give and take, and limited information sharing. It is this limited two way communications that puts Craigslist and not Kijiji in the realm of social media. The end result is that Craigslist is a very efficient tool when browsing.

Kijiji, on the other hand allows double, triple or how many you want postings of the same exact ad, as well as commercial postings. It is a waste of a reader’s time to page through these postings and this detracts from the effectiveness of the tool. Feedback to Kijiji about duplicate or miscategorized postings seems to be ineffective because it seems errant postings are not removed. The lack of ability to correct these mistakes hark back to the days before interactive web sites and seems to annoy me more than it should. Due to the increased noise sifting through Kijiji takes longer than Craigslist. The saving grace of Kijiji is that they allow much better photographs of items than Craigslist. The photos can be enlarged and browsed one at a time, forward and backward, to the reader’s heart’s content. Perusing photos at your leisure can allow the buyer to better evaluate the condition of the product.

If only Craigslist could better host photos, they’d beat the pants off Kijiji. This has yet to happen. Today I often wish to find the article on Craigslist and then to enlarge the item’s photos on Kijiji. Sadly this does not happen often.

Another difference between the two sites occurs when you try to sell something. Both sites allow you to sell almost all items for free, but while CL posts up your ad near immediately, with Kijiji you need to wait 24 hrs. No wonder people double and triple post on Kijiji. The Kijiji message you get when you submit your ad is a large circled “X”, followed by “Your item has been submitted”. You’re not sure whether to believe the “X” or the message. your ad goes into oblivion, seemingly lost. On CL your ad appears within a couple of minutes. CL just behaves more intuitively when posting ads.

The layout of Craigslist is simple and efficient, with as few graphics as possible. This clarity of content aids in navigation to where you wish to browse. Maybe the lack of graphics is also a throwback to the days of low bandwidth. No matter the reason, Craigslist loads so much faster than the fat and slothful Kijiji. I suppose you can choose the style you want, but for me eye candy takes a backseat to clarity of navigation and efficiency of fast display.