Internet auction leader eBay has silently launched a new online classified advertising service in the United States. Kijiji, which means "village" in Swahili, is one of eBay's several classified advertising efforts outside U.S. The service is a market leader in Canada, Germany, Italy and Taiwan. And it is designed to rival Craigslist, a Francisco-based company that manages classified ad sites for 300 cities, which yields 12 million new ad listings each month. In 2004, eBay acquired a 25% stake in Craigslist.

eBay introduced the Kijiji site in the United States without trumpet blast last Friday, a move that was reported yesterday on the Web site of The Wall Street Journal. The new site has separate classified ad pages for 220 cities and allows users to buy and sell items in a variety of categories like antiques, cars, motorcycles and pets.

"This is going to be our classified ad play in the United States," said an eBay spokesman, Hani Durzy. "We look at it as competition to Craigslist and other platforms. But we think there is room for competition." Durzy said eBay was planning to keep its stake in Craigslist. eBay plans to attract users to its new site by buying advertisements on search engines and by ensuring that listings appear in unpaid, or natural, search engine results. There are no plans to direct eBay traffic to the site, Durzy said.

Craigslist's CEO Jim Buckmaster said, "One of the beauties of viewing our world through public service goggles is that there is no need to worry about what other companies are doing. Many companies offer classifieds, but since we don't concern ourselves with considerations such as market share or revenue maximization, we don't think of them as competition, or as a challenge to Craigslist."