Newspaper JV Topix.net Debuts Craigslist Rival

News aggregation site Topix.net, a joint venture between Gannett, Knight Ridder and Tribune, has started a free classified ad service that is highly contextual. This is a big move for Topix.net. It puts them squarely up against Craigslist - the giant that is eating away much of the newspaper biz' revenue base. At the same time, it curiously provides a free alternative to existing paid services these companies run independent of their Topix JV.

Topix.net searches and sifts through news from thousands of news and blog sources and categorizes them into thousands of different topical and local news pages. It's honestly one of the most useful sites on the Web. (Disclaimer: I did at one time consult to Topix, but they did not contact me on this story.)

Each news topic page includes highlighted news from Topix.net's featured partners (some of which are from outside the JV), press releases, as well as forums where anyone can write their own news story. It also aggregates content from thousands of sources. Now the news site has started a program that lets people post their own free classified ads on each of these local pages. You can see these ads on the right hand side of this page, for example.

So far, the program is limited to local pages. So you can't, for example, post an ad about a VW Beetle for sale on the relevant topic page. I can easily see that coming since the relevance is so high. You're limited to posting an ad on a certain zip code pages as well as others that are nearby.

Topix.net is soliciting ads for all of the big classified categories: housing, jobs, for sale, services, events and local shops. Once the ads are placed they appear to run indefinitely. More importantly they invite the browsers to comment on the ads or flag ones that are questionable.

The fact that Topix.net is taking free ads is a gutsy move. However, when you think about who owns the company, the ramifications are huge. In many instances Topix is wrapping a free ad service around content it doesn't own, but is aggregating. Plus as I mentioned at the top, this is a limited, but free alternative to paid sites like Careerbuilder, a site that is run by the very same JV partners. I don't expect it to crush Craigslist anytime soon, but it does convolute this market in a big way.

Technorati Tags: Careerbuilder, Classifieds, Craigslist, Gannett, Knight Ridder, Newspapers, Topix.net, Tribune