Oodle raises round, plans to relaunch Facebook Marketplace soon
Classified ad network Oodle seems to be banking on the idea that more people will buying and selling stuff informally during a recession. It has just raised $5.6 million from existing investors.
The San Mateo, Calif.-based company also says it passed 10 million visits in January. These are visits that I assume didn’t just come from Oodle’s site but from its ads that run across sites and services provided by companies like Comcast, Wal-Mart and MySpace. The company has also won the rights to take over Facebook’s less-than-successful classifieds “Marketplace” application. The new version of Marketplace will be launched later this quarter, Oodle says.
Geoff Yang, founding partner of Redpoint Ventures, one of Oodle’s investors, say “Oodle is pioneering ‘social classifieds’ which uniquely combine commerce, social interaction, and an entertainment experience. This company could be a key player in changing the economics of social media.” We’ll see what these unique social classified ads turn out to be.
Besides Redpoint, investors include JAFCO Ventures and Greylock Partners.
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About the Author, Eric Eldon
Eric currently covers digital media technology and business news, especially what's happening on social networks and their platforms. He also writes and edits stories about venture capital, and lots of other stuff, too. He started at VentureBeat in the spring of 2007, half a year or so after Matt Marshall left his reporting job at the San Jose Mercury News to found the site. Eric previously cofounded a startup called Writewith, that was building editorial software for newspapers and other groups of writers. The startup didn't work out, but he learned a lot.