Smashing Magazine have an interesting article about redesigning Craigslist to make it easier to use.

Craigslist’s design has become quite stubbornly iconic in it’s simplicity but that doesn’t mean that it’s actually easy to use.

A few simple design changes could make Craigslist even more appealing to its buyers and sellers, possibly increasing the chance of a sale.

Craigslist is actually in quite  a unique position as it has hundreds of local sites so could conduct some useful small-scale user testing to see if improvements could be made.

The 5 day eBay boycott by sellers has reportedly reduced eBay‘s listings by 3%, from 14.5 million to 14 million.

Whether this dip in listings is directly because of striking sellers and the eBay boycott or whether it is just seasonal is just speculation. But eBay has certainly upset some regular sellers and PowerSellers who have mentioned they are unlikely to return to sell on eBay – turning to alternative auction websites like eBid or uBid or classifieds like Craigslist and Loot to sell stuff on.

The popular classifieds listing directory has announced plans to extend into Boston, New York and Chicago.

Gumtree already operates free classifieds listings in the UK, Poland, Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.

Gumtree will compete for classfieds in the US with Craigslist and Kijiji (owned by eBay).