Kijiji US is eBay’s attempt to bury Craigslist. It has been buzzed about for a while now, but I received an e-mail announcement, from eBay, only this morning. I guess, it is official starting today.

Kijiji is wrong on many levels, as in - it should have never existed in the first place wrong. An industry leader with wallet as fat as eBay’s simply has to absorb iconic successes like Craigslist that rub shoulders against its primary business. Instead, eBay purchased minority share (25%) of Craigslist, in 2004 and a year later launched Kijiji overseas. Now it is bringing Kijiji to the US market, to directly compete with the company that it owns a large part of.

I have no idea what kind of world does the sequence of eBay’s moves makes sense in, but who am I to judge? No doubt, eBay’s executives are plotting something that our simple minds can not reach. After all, that is why they are eBay executives and us - just a bunch of lousy bloggers with too much time on our hands, right?

With a modest attitude like that, I give up analyzing the business strategy behind Kijiji and its future prospects. Instead, let me offer you a screenshot snippet that I found quite amusing:

Now, District of Columbia has indeed been “blessed” to have a special status, taxation without representation and alternatives for spelling, but I swear I have never seen it spelled as “D. Columbia”. eBay did really go down the innovative path on this one.

Laughing out loud.