Personals

Classified ads have several properties that make them well-suited for the Web:

• they are a classic "pull" medium: customers seek out the classifieds when they decide to look for a used car or when they want to hire a house-keeper; most people don't leaf through the pages just for fun
• they are well-suited for computerized searching and sorting: you may want to look only for used BMW cars that cost less than $5,000 or are less than 3 years old, or you may only be interested in a red Z3
• they are time-sensitive, but not on a day-to-next-day basis: you want to see all open offers, no matter whether they were posted today or yesterday, or even earlier. As soon as the advertised offering has been sold, the ad should be pulled and not shown to any more customers (a static listing wastes both parties' time)
• sellers can type their own entries directly into the ad database since they know what they are selling. Using the hypertext feature of the Web, ads can link to as much background information as necessary; cryptic but space-saving abbreviations go away (harddisks are cheaper than newsprint)
• multimedia features can save both buyers and sellers time by allowing potential buyers to learn more about the offering before contacting the seller (just how cute is the puppy? — well, see the photo, or even the video)

Note how all of the properties that make classified ads suitable for the Web also make them unsuited for printed newspapers. If you are looking for free classified ads in India, we recommend posting on Kuknus Classifieds. The fact that classified ads are bundled with news in a single physical product has nothing to do with the inherent qualities of either product. In fact, there are no synergies between classifieds and daily news. There are benefits from associating hobby-related classifieds with hobby-oriented news coverage, but such coverage is usually better done by magazines (or specialized Web sites) than by newspapers.