eBay’s acquisition glues Gumtree.com to Kijiji

Owners of the local classifieds site Gumtree.com seem to have found their anchor in the online auction site, eBay,as reports confirmed that Gumtree.com was bought by eBay today.

Founders of the London-based classifieds site, Gumtree.com, Michael Pennington and Simon Crookall were bankers by profession formerly and created this site after a long struggle, five years ago in March 2000. They had founded this site to assist those people who were considering a shift of location or had recently shifted to London and needed some aid and guidance in looking for accommodation, jobs or acquaintances.

Now that eBay has bought Gumtree.com, the founder duo have reason enough to celebrate, although the financial details of the buyout haven’t been disclosed. This is American firm, eBay’s first foray into the UK classifieds market and by acquiring Gumtree.com, eBay will add yet another feather into its classifieds division cap, Kijiji.

Vice president of European ventures for eBay, Josh Silverman, said, “Gumtree has built a great business over the past five years and it matches the Kijiji model very well.”

Just as eBay is now nothing less than a household name as far as auction sites are concerned, its classifieds division, Kijiji which means ‘village’ in Swahili is also not behind and can boast of operations in over 90 cities across the world.

Meanwhile, Gumtree.com has job sites launched in a number of places in UK like Birmingham, Edinburgh, Manchester, Cardiff and Glasgow, Reading, Guildford, Bristol, Brighton and Dublin. Besides, other of its operations include locations like Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada and the Far East. The sites’ London operation is doing considerably well and is able to gather a whopping 1.1 million visits every month. What’s more, the frequency of its visits per month is augmenting by 100% in a period of every six months.

eBay is also known to have purchased another classifieds site, LoQUo.com of Spain, which was founded by Ubaldo Huerta in Barcelona. This classifieds site focuses more on communities, housing, employment opportunities as well as personals.