It is no secret that sales of classifieds in print publications has been spiraling down for many years now, and with no end in sight. That is precisely why our sister site, SFN Blog paid careful attention to the news that a group of U.S. newspaper and broadcast TV news websites have allied to create a national online listing and auction site, boocoo, which is aimed to compete against Craigslist and eBay. The Editors Weblog got in touch with Tony Marsella, president of boocoo's parent company, Ranger Data Technologies, to find out what this new revenue model might mean for the newspapers and classified advertising sales.

Upon logging in to the boocoo preview website (a sneak-peek account details at the bottom of this article) users are greeted with a very clean, intuitive interface that will feel familiar and easy for anyone who has bought or sold items online before. The one key difference in terms of aesthetics is that once the site goes live, there will be customized, branded pages that will ease users from their local newspaper's website onto the boocoo site. The revenue model employed here is to license zip-codes to more than 300 newspaper publishers, such as The Boston Herald and Austin American-Statesman, with a total print audience of 22 million readers.

The big question for many consumers and industry analysts will "What is the value proposition/brand differentiation boocoo represents for the end-users?" Tony Marsella had this to say on the subject:

Craigslist is a wide open, dangerous, anonymous website. There are no standards of acceptance, and clearly no safeguards for consumers. Simply google "Craigslist complaints" and you will see what I mean. At boocoo we have a very local focus and for those consumers that click on the tab in the newspaper's website, when our site appears it will carry the same header from the newspaper pages. That is it will appear to be the same site carrying the same credibility of the local partner...

On Craigslist the model is "put the ad up and people work the price down", whereas our model is just the opposite. Put the item on and bid the price up. We wil also not allow "adult" materials, services, etc. Our standard will be the high standards that newspapers have maintained for years in their local markets. We will in the proper fashion make all of these points in our ad campaigns.

eBay is extremely vulnerable in the area of general merchandise auctions. They have moved far from those people as they continue to move toward big box retail and fixed price selling. Items that are difficult to ship, (lawn mowers, large furninture, snow blowers, etc.) work very well in a market that has a local emphasis. Local focus also gives consumers the added advantage of shopping for services. As boocoo already has enhancements in the works, soon after the initial public launch it will offer local service companies, (painters, carpenters, landscapers, etc.) the opportunity to bid on jobs placed by consumers in their community. These "reverse" auctions will greatly benefit by buyer and seller. Sellers get the benefit of lower bids, and the buyers get another job to do! This is an area that has eluded eBay for years, and at the same time focuses on an area of newspaper.
When asked about how boocoo plans to deal with the large problem of fraud and illicit activity on auction sites, Marsella responded:

There is no easy answer at this point, but we will devote time and money to this issue in an ongoing basis. There are of course standards that we have in place that mirror the highest standards that newspapers have always held, that I have mentioned earlier. In addition, we have all of the technological methods of "spotting" and rejecting that sort of activity.
And regarding the origins of the unusual business name, boocoo:

It is indeed a corruption of the French term beaucoup. It is also urban slang in the US for "lots of". We think it has a lot of uses. Our ad agency really liked the idea of it being both a noun and a verb. Not all names lend themselves to that. One cannot go "General Electricing" so to speak. But one can go "boocooing", make boocoo bucks!
The website goes live to the public on Monday, but if you'd like a sneak preview, you can use the following account information:

username: ranger
password: boocoorocks

Click here to check it out.

Sources: BusinessWire