How Craigslist Costs Newspapers Money 480
Allnighterking writes "Well you knew it would happen, Now that eBay has purchased 25% of craigslist, the news is out and suddenly newspapers are claiming that it's costing them money (50-65 million U.S. dollars a year). The original Slashdot coverage is here."
Re:craigslist? (Score:4, Informative)
If you're too lazy for that:
Massive online classified ads/community website. Organized based on metropolitan region. Most postings are free. Help Wanted postings in (I think) SF, LA, and NY are the only ones that cost money.
Radio's gonna kill the (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Who's Josh? (Score:4, Informative)
Oh.. and Go Craig! Woohoo! Congrats!
Good - the print media moguls need competition (Score:5, Informative)
This is all good news. It costs me like $400+ to put a tiny job classifieds ad in the local daily paper. What a ripoff - more than many small shops can afford. Craigslist is what - $75? It's called competition, and the print papers need a healthy dose of it.
The other other reason Craiglist does well is they produce results. I've used other online services to source out staff and contractors and gotten nothing but garbage. The two postings I've put on Craigslist in the past month have netted me numerous qualifed and experienced candidates.
Additional Links (Score:4, Informative)
Which has a link to a preview of the report (pdf); the price to buy the report is $250 - both of which can be found here [classified...igence.com].
Misconception... (Score:5, Informative)
I used to work at Trader Joe's in SOMA (SF) and had the fortune of having a Craigslist employee come through my line (he was wearing a CL shirt, which I inquired about). We got to the topic of Craigslist and its plethora of free boards/posting for all sorts of items. I asked how much bandwidth they were using (something like 20 MB per second at the time) and how they got their revenue since there weren't any advertisements on the site. The solution: They charge companies to post employment listings... and evidentially only for the San Francisco section of Craigslist. All the other cities sections were still completely free. (At least this was the case at the time I talked to this employee)
So while the newspapers are claiming they are losing that money to Craigslist (which is true), it's more of a fact that these companies are simply switching to a service that they feel produces better results, not neccesarily the fact that Craigslist is a (mostly) free service for them.
(Of course, it also helps that you can search job postings by location, money, job types, and other criteria... which isn't all that easy in a hard copy newspaper. It's simply a better medium)
(Offtopic - I've also had someone from Yahoo come through my line, who was also wearing a company shirt. After talking for a bit, she asked if I used Yahoo at all. I told her I used Google. She didn't say another word to me while she was in the store!)
Re:Well that's too bad.... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Irony is more than proper clothes care (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Well that's too bad.... (Score:4, Informative)
real irony is the failure of Craig's philosophy (Score:5, Informative)
The real irony is that Craigslist tends to be, like Ebay (which was responsible for 3/4 of ALL internet fraud complaints), something you have to approach EXTREMELY carefully.
People on Craigslist tend to be really flaky- we're talking the stoned kind of flaky, or the "I'm going to try and cheat you because I think I'm clever" kind of flaky; I'm not sure which is worse. Then there are all the wierdos posting in the various personals section- if you want a great laugh (no matter your gender), read those sections; makes you think of someone walking into McDonalds with $2 and expecting a rare Filet Mignon with sauteed mushrooms. Or the ever popular "I'm hot. Send a picture. Sexiest one wins." I laughed for about 5 minutes so hard I couldn't breathe, and resolved never to look in w4m again because it was dangerous to my health, even if it was a fantastic laugh.
Top problem though, is that people are complete IDIOTS when it comes to listing their items. "Printer. Best offer." Inkjet? Laser? Dot matrix? Made this decade? God forbid they tell us what company made it. I also love it when useless, worthless stuff is offered up- like cheapo computer speakers. People, I'm all for the recycling bit, but take that shit to the RECYCLING CENTER, don't waste anyone's time putting it up for sale for $5. Round trip subway fare costs at least half that...
The hysterical bit is that Craiglist supposedly has an "advisory committee" that handles how the site is presented to users. When I complained that even basic instructions were never shown to users as part of the posting procedure and it was clear there was a problem, Craig just replied, "thanks, the committee will think about it".
Then there are the people who post the "free" iPod/plasma/whatever emails (which are usually flagged by the community)...the problem is that there's nothing to keep them from posting over and over, because (to my knowledge) there is no automatic blacklist after X number of posts flagged...so spamming is pretty easy.
Then there are the ripoffs. Go read your city's /sys/ for a few minutes, and see how many times you say "WHAT?!"...like people asking $500 for a Pentium 3 system. Go read /ele/ and see how many times you see "Theater Research" speakers being offered for $500; the more honest (or naive) ones admit to buying it from some guys in a white van...the others just think "oh well, I'll get some other sucker to buy 'em".
Classic example of the try-to-sucker-you-by-omission-and-feined-ignorance approach was a Phaser printer being offered for sale for a few hundred $ with no mention of WHY nobody uses wax printers anymore. In short- you MUST cover your ass like crazy. If it's too good to be true, it most certainly is someone trying to sucker you.
Typical, but when you consider it against Craig's motivations (community building and other crunchy-granola-ness), Craigslist has ultimately been a pretty spectacular failure. I used to report at least 5-6 posts a day to the abuse department for various reasons (all were accepted, and the abuse group IS very nice; they ALWAYS write you back! To the CL abuse staff, you have my sympathies and admiration), and I just got tired of it...it was like throwing a sandbag into a levee break and watching it disappear.
I also have a policy now, which I inform sellers of upfront. If the item is different from how it was represented in the post or follow-up emails, both of which I will have with me, I walk out the door- this is after several sellers presented something that was nothing like what they described (like a PC missing half its ram, being sold by a software programmer who played dumb. Riight).
Re:Additional Links (Score:1, Informative)
Which has a link to a preview of the report (pdf); the price to buy the report is $250 - both of which can be found here.
Just curious, maybe I'm wrong here, but what is that it's serving when you click http://www.classifiedintelligence.com/main.asp?Se
Seems to me the first one (33.pdf) is the 8-page preview @ 971KB...what is the next file (34.pdf) @ 2328KB??? It's 57 pages...I didn't waste my time reading the whole thing, but it looks like the full report! Am I missing something? Or are they missing something (like security)?
Someone reply to tell me I'm a crazy idiot because I am wrong.
Inject
Re:real irony is the failure of Craig's philosophy (Score:5, Informative)
I think that freecycle [freecycle.org] deserves a mention to help people dispose of stuff that has too little monetary value to hassle a price with it, but yet want to keep it out of the dumpster. Also, it is helping people out.
Actually, that's true (Score:5, Informative)
Craig
Re:real irony is the failure of Craig's philosophy (Score:3, Informative)
I went to subscribe to a different group earlier today and they asked for a comment about myself, which I thought unusual.
I suspect that this might be a way for yahoo to help deal with the increasing spam problem on the groups. I wouldn't take it as an invasion of privacy.
Re:Fry's Ads in the paper (Score:3, Informative)
http://varchars.com/blog/node/view/91 [varchars.com]
It's tough to pack where I live. (Score:3, Informative)
Where I live it's VERY hard to even get permission to have a rifle locked-up in your home.
Mace is illegal here.
Also, where I live, if someone comes into my home looking to steal shit, all I have the right to do is detain him until police arrive. I would be thrown in jail for kicking a home-invader's ass, and subject to civil action as well.
Apparently to get the level of licensure to own a handgun here I'd have to take a written test, a certified (target) test, and gun safety training annually, in addition to getting written permission from town hall and the police department.
Apparently the former police chief of a nearby town was DENIED the right to bring his handguns here when he moved (to be closer to family), because "I hunt, and as a former officer of the law I need the protection afforded by firearms." isn't reason enough for town hall to grant you the class-a license.
Re:Sorry, not the case (Score:5, Informative)
I've scored two long-term job contracts. I've made two new female friends (no w4m stuff, don't trust it). Sold my keyboard, and my Mac laptop, bought 120 DVDs, bought a freezer, sold my Gameboy SP, and made new friends in West Seattle. Bought an Aerostar van, hooked up with a new film agency, and argued with people in L.A. about the film industry in general.
So I say to the Seattle Times and the Seattle P.I.: goodbye. Good riddance.
Linguistic feedback (Score:3, Informative)
"to fail to keep, sustain, or maintain"
Per Se (Score:2, Informative)
If you don't know how to spell per se just say "as such" or "by itself" or swhatever, spelling it like that make it seem you don't know shit and you're trying to be pretencious, trying to use a Latin formula without knowing where it comes from.
Wikipedia (Score:3, Informative)
craigslist is a highly popular network of urban online communities, featuring free classified advertisements (with employment, housing, personals, for sale/wanted, services, community, events, gigs and resumes categories) and forums sorted by various topics. It was founded in 1995 by Craig Newmark for the San Francisco Bay Area and was incorporated in 1999, as a for-profit company with social goals. After incorporation, it expanded into nine more cities in 2000, four each in 2001 and 2002, fourteen in 2003; as of 2004, craigslist is in about 75 cities, in the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, continental Europe, Australia, Asia, and [[Brazil]. As of 2004, craigslist operates with a staff of 14 people. It does not advertise. Its sole source of revenue is paid job ads in select cities ($75 per ad for the San Francisco Bay Area and $25 per ad for New York and Los Angeles). It receives one billion page views per month from five million unique visitors. Its revenue was approximately $10 million in 2003.
Re:Fry's Ads in the paper (Score:2, Informative)
It isn't that they are behind the times. They don't want this information easily searchable. Most items for sale in a grocery store are loss leaders, meaning they actually loose money when you buy them. However it is very difficult for most people to go into a grocery store and *only* buy the products that are on sale.
I go to buy a gallon of milk and it costs me $50 in all of the other stuff that I "need".
I tried a