Real People Real Stuff

A new website gives classifieds a touch
of YouTube, says Linton Chiswick
July 17, 2007

In new media, the best new ideas are often old ideas, combined. RealPeopleRealStuff takes the classified ad, tried and tested online by Craigslist and Gumtree, and combines it with the YouTube video-sharing model.

The result - ultra lo-fi homemade video ads touting everything from peanut brittle to commercial property - is so obvious Internet entrepreneurs everywhere can't believe they didn't think of it themselves. But, to be fair, neither did RealPeopleRealStuff.

Cell-it, an online video ad site specialising in mobile phone videos, launched a full year ago. It's limited to American ads, charges advertisers money (how shockingly old-media), and appears to have plenty of content. Much of it, on closer inspection, is very old; so either 
nobody's buying, or vendors are forgetting to take down old ads.

iMoondo, another video personal classifieds site, started out as a local Boston service and now offers Spanish, French, German and Japanese versions. But it has suffered from a chronic lack of publicity, and only the US site carries any ads.

RealPeopleRealStuff, while new, has the air of a website that might stick around. It's free-to-use, as quick and convenient as YouTube, and international. The theory is that the very amateurishness of these clumsy, hopeful videos, combined with a chance to see the product working, breeds trust. Certainly it's addictive.

RealPeopleRealStuff facilitates contact between vendor and buyer, but has no involvement in the trade itself. How it will make money isn't clear. Perhaps it will eventually charge to advertise, or charge to pass on enquiries. The bigger question is how it will fend off competition from eBay, Craigslist and YouTube itself, should any - or all - of them, decide to combine the same old ideas and follow it into the video ads market. A new trend starts here