Greg's Corner

AIM Group confirms our suspicions about OfferUp and LetGo

In a recent blog post, classifieds industry watchdog organization the AIM Group, appears to have confirmed some of our suspicions about classifieds apps OfferUp and LetGo. In our blog post about the Forbes article that called us ‘for naught’, we questioned the financial and userbase stats put out by the two apps. While we postulated the use of clickfarms may be involved, AIM Group founder Peter M. Zollman seems to believe the claims of success put out by both apps are fabricated.

Regarding the claims of monetary success from both apps, Mr. Zollman had this to say…

OfferUp “says it will handily surpass $20 billion in goods sold this year, with about half coming from car sales.” (To which we reply: “Oh really? And how do you value transactions when they never take place on the site, when listings are reposted over and over, when your users don’t have any transaction capabilities, and when user visits are no indicator of who’s actually buying or selling?” We don’t take estimates of sales on OfferUp, LetGo and similar sites with a grain of salt; we take them as unmitigated baloney, to use the polite term.)

Mr. Zollman also calls LetGo’s claims that they will facilitate $23.4B in transactions baloney.

With all due respect, the allegedly fictitious claims made by both apps seem to exhibit a desperate attempt to not only please current investors, but also to try to attract new investors in the ever-increasing shell game that is startup funding.