So I hired someone to do marketing, and put up a couple of ads, and that was just a wasted effort. Word of mouth is what really worked. I realized that he could run things better than I could. I was able, to some extent, to divorce my ego from my CEO role.
And I'd had a lot of lessons. I'd seen micromanagement be a big problem in the tech industry. I just saw lots of situations where people screwed up by interfering with people who could do the job. To a shocking degree, Craigslist looks the same today as it did in the '90s. You're not deeply involved in the company anymore, but still: Why? I didn't know how to design fancy. The evolution of Craigslist was based on listening to people as to what they wanted and what was needed.
People consistently told us they didn't want fancy stuff; they wanted something simple, straightforward, and fast. We listened to consensus rather than what someone was trying to talk us into. Or sometimes you may hear, from 10 people who love fancy stuff, that we should do this fancy thing, and then you hear from a million other people saying keep it simple. So you turned over operations to Jim in and--famously--stuck with customer service. You've stepped back more in recent years, yes? In the past two years, I've delegated more leadership to the customer service team.
I realized that I was not helping. I was inhibiting. I do minimal stuff to stay in touch, because detachment from your thing is wrong and damaging. I regard my life over the past 20 years or so as completely surreal. I didn't expect that my hobby would turn into a successful business, and also a very successful way for people to help one another.
And I never expected that would lead me to do a lot of other civic engagement and philanthropy. We'll get back to that in a moment. But let's talk about what you took away from the eBay situation--it bought a You started Craigconnects, your umbrella for your philanthropic work, in Can you articulate your vision for giving, and how it meshes with your vision of the grass roots and the Web? Doing well by doing good is a business model , and Craigslist is about having a business that helps people help one another out.
Craigconnects is my civic engagement thing where, in a number of areas I believe in, people help people. One is veterans and military families. I've gotten behind voting rights groups in a purely nonpartisan way--people need to be voting. You have to have good information to vote, and I support the Trust Project, which is working to develop indicators of trustworthiness that can be done as HTML tags in articles.
One could be a link to an ethics code; one could be a link to an accountability process. There could be tags to whether or not this is original reporting, maybe, to distinguish opinion versus factual pieces.
So any news aggregator would look for these tags, and if the reporter or the news organization has committed to them, then that article would be ranked more highly than articles from outlets that haven't made this commitment. I'm also going pretty big with Wikipedia. While it has issues, it has become a major source of breaking news.
Like anywhere, something may go wrong, but in Wikipedia it gets corrected. I don't have a sweeping vision. That represents a 70 percent decrease, and the trend does not appear to be slowing. Although many factors contributed to this decline, the association believes sites like Craigslist played a large role in cutting into newspaper revenues.
This makes sense considering that it costs consumers nothing to post on Craigslist while newspaper ads can be very costly. Keith Patrick has been writing online since His articles appear on Patch. He is currently studying journalism and e-commerce at DePaul University in Chicago.
By Keith Patrick. A few months later, the bubble burst, and MetroVox was shut down. To avoid a similar incident, Newmark decided to run Craigslist as a for-profit organization.
Furthermore, acknowledging that he lagged the managerial skills to run a larger organization, he subsequently handed over the reins to Jim Buckmaster. In , Buckmaster dropped out of medical school at the University of Michigan but continued to hang around campus to study classics and doing data entry work.
He eventually began teaching himself how to program and went on to join Creditland as a software engineer in At Creditland, he found himself constantly clashing with the sales side, which imposed unrealistic demands on the engineers. A few months later, he posted his resume on Craigslist where Newmark eventually discovered it. A few months in, Newmark asked him to lead the company as CEO, which he has done ever since. By August , the site had surpassed 1 billion monthly page views for the first time, making it one of the most frequented websites in America.
Over the next few years, Craigslist continued to add more cities and countries to its platform. The firm stayed true to its San Francisco roots until but then decided to expand across the United States.
In , Craigslist announced that it would add another cities to its portfolio, both from the States as well as other countries such as Malaysia, Portugal, or Pakistan. While Craigslist continued to rise in popularity, it started to face scrutiny — both from the court of law as well as other businesses.
For once, the platform had been known for having listings that would encourage prostitution. In , 2 people were murdered after meeting with a supposed client that was seeking erotic services. As a result, Craigslist created a dedicated adult section on its site that it was required to frequently monitor. Others speculated that the threats of the attorney general were simply a result of the heavy lobbying conducted by the newspaper industry.
The rise of Craigslist, which charged considerably lower for its classifieds, led to heavily declining revenue figures for many newspapers. Craigslist did everything in its power to protect that popularity.
In , it had made dramatic changes to its terms and conditions. As a result, Craigslist became the exclusive licensee of the content generated on its platform, which granted it the ability to sue anyone that used it without permission. As a result, both sites had to take the content down.
Nevertheless, Craigslist gained some inspiration from its interaction with Padmapper. For example, the "for sale" category features subcategories like computer, books, electronics, sporting, motorcycles and collectibles, among others.
Most ads include the member's e-mail address. Craigslist offers a function that masks e-mail so that members don't have to worry about their address being openly available. All transactions are between the person who posted the ad and the person responding to it. Craigslist's employees don't get involved in any transactions or discussions unless someone reports a problem.
If you want to participate in forum discussions or post your own classifieds, you need to create a craigslist account. The only thing you need to become a member is a valid e-mail address.
The signup process is short and painless -- after entering your e-mail and filling in a verification word which helps prevent programs called bots from creating accounts to post ads automatically , you'll receive an e-mail that includes a link you'll need to click on to verify your account and log in.
Once you've done that, you've officially joined the craigslist community. Craigslist users act like the site's watchdogs by monitoring the content that gets posted. Users flag posts to draw attention to those that are particularly interesting and those that detract from the site. In this article, we'll look at craigslist's impact on the Internet, the corporate structure of the company and some of the controversies involving the Web site.
The Community category on craigslist functions like a community center's bulletin board. It includes subsections for local news, politics, announcements, volunteer opportunities, rideshare programs and other local events and activities. The Gigs category is for short-term work assignments rather than permanent jobs. Each craigslist site focuses on a specific community. Originally, craigslist only listed classifieds and announcements within San Francisco.
As the service grew in popularity, expanding well beyond founder Craig Newmark's original concept, craigslist added other cities to its network.
The first city to join the network was Boston in Today, more than cities have a craigslist community site. Because community members largely moderate the sites, craigslist employees can focus their attention on coordinating transactions for job and housing posts, helping members troubleshoot problems and responding to reports of abuse or illegal behavior.
Without communal moderation, the craigslist staff would be severely overworked. The executive team at craigslist maintains that the reason for the site's success is the user community. The team believes that craigslist gives users a place to communicate and help one another, fostering community spirit. The site's emphasis on community reflects its founder's and CEO's values -- Craig Newmark and Jim Buckmaster try to avoid commercialism and corporate culture in their company [source: craigslist.
Craigslist communities appeal to a broad range of users. The simple, organized layout and helpful search engine makes navigation easy. Craigslist members range from teenagers to senior citizens. They post on the forums, shop online, trade tips and make new friends. While the site itself may not be the most visually interesting Internet destination, there's no denying its effectiveness.
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