Neha Patil (Editor)

Huuto.net

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Type of site
  
Online auction

Owner
  
Ilta-Sanomat

Website
  
huuto.net

Available in
  
Finnish

Created by
  
Lari Lohikoski

Alexa rank
  
9,462 (April 2014)

Huuto.net

Huuto.net is a Finnish online auction similar to the international eBay or the Swedish Tradera. It was established in 1999 and is owned by Ilta-Sanomat Oy, which belongs to the Sanoma media group.

The main differences between Huuto.net and eBay are:

  • Listing items on Huuto.net is free of charge. The seller is charged a fee should an item sell, the same as eBay.
  • Sellers can store "templates" of up to five items within their accounts for future editing and listing. eBay users need an app like TurboLister to do this, although TurboLister is not limited to five items.
  • Huuto.net uses conventional bidding and proxy bidding. The first bid however is raised from the seller's start bid, and does not begin at that price.
  • Huuto.net does not (as of May 2014) offer a "saved search" facility.
  • Huuto.net does not (as of May 2014) offer PayPal as a payment method.
  • "Standard" users cannot message other users. Users are required to upgrade (for a fee) to get this facility.
  • Negative or neutral feedback can be left for buyers (e.g.: those who fail to pay, etc.). This was removed from eBay some time ago.

    • The name of the website is derived from huutokauppa (Finnish for "auction").

    On August 18, 2007, Huuto.net had more than 500,000 items on sale. By March 26, 2014, this had risen to over 1.8 million items.

    History

    Huuto.net was created in January 1999 by Lari Lohikoski in Helsinki. It was a private service until the art auction Bukowskis bought it from Lohikoski in September 1999. Bukowski announced they would develop Huuto.net into an international auction of collectibles, but it was never done. Instead, they sold the website to Sonera Plaza Oyj in May 2001. After the fusion of Sonera Plaza with Sonera, which later fusioned with Telia to form TeliaSonera, Huuto.net followed along.

    TeliaSonera concentrated heavily on its telephone operator business and neglected many unrelated branches, Huuto.net being one of them. Thus, the website did not develop much in the ownership of TeliaSonera and its functionality suffered. In June 2005 TeliaSonera sold Huuto.net to Ilta-Sanomat Oy and the website became the most popular Finnish classified advertising service.

    References

    Huuto.net Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA