Classifieds and the New Web

Walmart.com has introduced classifieds. Powered by Web 2.0 startup Oodle, Walmart is offering free classifieds as an expanded part of it’s web services. While the technical challenge must have been relatively simple, an integration of Oodle’s services, the strategy is a natural fit for Walmart.

The business of serving the local community has always been at the core of Walmart but a digital entry underlines the expanded ambitions. This entry also solidifies the coming death of local newspapers. By failing to effectively create an effective web model, newspapers have acquiesced classifieds to free competitors like Walmart and of course, Craigslist.

A lesson from this isn’t the death of newspapers, that has been a well documented joke for a while, it’s that the web enables anyone to rapidly enable services into new segments with relative ease. A Walmart and Oodle partnership is a win-win for both firms because technology development is often challenging and Oodle gets dramatically bigger exposure.

Of course, whether Walmart will succeed is an entirely different story.