How Craigslist is Keeping up Internet Ideals 173
prostoalex writes "CBS MarketWatch discusses whether Craig Newmark and CraigsList.org are missing out by not 'monetizing' their traffic or selling out to large corporations. CraigsList is currently #7 e-commerce site on the Internet with 13M unique visitors monthly, and only charges for real estate listings by professional brokers. No word on whether that income is enough to pay 24 salaries and data center fees for hosting a major Internet site." From the article: "Their noble stance gives entrepreneurs from San Francisco a great name. Despite the many unfortunate examples of greed, Internet entrepreneurs aren't all about getting rich quick and cashing out. At an entrepreneur's roots is a vision to provide a service that helps alleviate a pain point. The money thing always muddied the waters down the road. The attitude at Craigslist is a nice reminder of how entrepreneurs' ideals can still remain intact, no matter how odd they may seem in a world that worships money."
Quite some insight from comrade Bambi Francisco (Score:4, Interesting)
I see these sort of ideas come out of the San Francisco circle jerk of media many times. Capitalism is bad except for OUR capitalists, which are good. In the long run, this approach may make these guys even more greedy over the years compared to all the prospectors who try the hit-and-run approach, and there is nothing wrong with that. In fact, all this economic navel gazing is only possible in rich capitalist countries where we have more time for self-righteousness because we don't have to spend so much time just getting enough food to live.
Great guys (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Santa says "tons of money? ho ho ho!" (Score:2, Interesting)
Are they really? I think they realise that charging for more types of ads, or some other money-making tactic, makes their service less attractive, and makes it that much easier for someone else to come from nowhere and overtake them.
It's not too obvious what they'd do, either - perhaps their own Google-style "sponsored" ads (maybe letting you pay to get your ad show more prominently). But that might well annoy their customers more than Google's discreet ads do.
Maybe they're just biding their time because they don't know what to do next. But in any event, if they have enough business sense to become the most popular site in their market, I don't think they're acting entirely out of altruism.
A world that worships money? (Score:3, Interesting)
Well obviously if there are people like Craig Newmark, then the whole world doesn't worship money. I don't like this blanket statement because it assumes an extreme view while the very article it's attached to shows the opposite. In fact, statements like that are one of the main reasons so many people dislike and distrust mainstream media.
Thanks, Craig, for proving the world doesn't "worship money." I've met too many web site owners that did sell out. I'm on your side.
greater good or greater bad...? (Score:5, Interesting)
That being said, this decision on Craigslist's part to not monetize the site fully is something like "accelerated capitalism". In other words, they're skipping that whole phase where they maximize their size and influence to make lots of money until a competitor comes in to undercut them - because you pretty much CAN'T undercut them, they're undercutting themselves to achieve scale. Sites like Youtube are doing this too - the technology of everything has grown faster than the market can respond.
Internet Ideal (Score:4, Interesting)
While people often make attempts to prevert the internet into what they want it to be, a place to advertise, a place to argue, to publish information about yourself that no one wants to read, it continues to resist shoves in any particular direction. When something new is added the old stuff is not displaced. YouTube can make thousands of videos available and everyone can get really excited about the coming Web 2.0 apocalypse, but all the old stuff is still right where it was and just as useful.
If Craigslist wants to give stuff away, they can. If someone wants to charge for the exact same service, they can. If a guy can convince a VC to give him a couple of hundred million dollars to build a web site that tries to ship 50 lb bags of dog food across the country, and he has a time machine to take him back to the early 90s, he can.
Craigslist is killing newspapers (Score:5, Interesting)
Forbes occasionally whines about Craigslist. [forbes.com] The real effect of Craigslist is not on the Internet. It's killing newspaper classified advertising, which used to be highly profitable.
Re:If they charged... (Score:5, Interesting)
It and livejournal with its communities are basically USENET for the 21st century. Not that USENET is dead, BTW, but they're a more user-friendly replacement.
-b.
Re:Santa says "tons of money? ho ho ho!" (Score:4, Interesting)
I just finished re-reading "The Door Into Summer" by Robert Heinlein and i'm reminded of the part where the main character's business partners are trying to force him out of so they can sell the company to a big corporation. He says something along the lines of "You can't use more than one swimming pool or more than one yacht at a time, and you'll have both in another year with the way we're doing business now so why should we sell out to another company and put them in charge?" But his partners are intent on having more money and power than they can actually use, just for the sake of money and power.
It seems like all the old desires to build empires out of countries has changed with the times and been applied to the business world. I wonder if society as a whole will ever look back at the present and think "why did they ever waste so much time and happiness in pursuit of something like that?"
Re:Quite some insight from comrade Bambi Francisco (Score:3, Interesting)
For some reason I think you are being sarcastic, but at the same time I can't really see people in Somalia or Sudan having much ado about navel gazing either.
Re:Santa says "tons of money? ho ho ho!" (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Slashdot on the other hand ... (Score:3, Interesting)
OSDN is based entirely on GPL'd code and sponsors those projects (afiak, i haven't bothered to research this at all but it certainly isn't M$ funding "surveys" to find in their favor)
maybe they're trying to show that open/free software can make money aka support viable business and create a beachhead on the M$ front
oh and i've been reading
how much money have you donated? i haven't donated any so you won't hear me bitch
ps i use XP cause it Just Works (TM) unlike linux which while making huge leaps is still way behind the mainstream curve (games and porn people, come on, aren't you the same ones working in the datacenters for these venues anyway? shouldn't you know what sells?) but i have tons of freeware apps, and that i owe to the community.
waspleg
Craigslist Europe. (Score:3, Interesting)
However, in Europe things are a little different. In most EU countries there isn't the volume of genuine users to make the flagging system work. Thus it's an ever decreasing spiral downward -> the site's full of spam, con artists, grey and black hats -> genuine advertisers don't post because of it -> no-one visits the site.
Take for example Craigslist Denmark as typical. there's about 1,000 posts on the site. Less than 10% are genuine. Which in some ways is nice, because the spammers are spamming scammers and vice versa. If anyone from Craigslist is reading this, please take some time to be utterly ashamed at the state of most of your EU pages. You have failed.
If you are looking for something illegal, Craigslist Europe IS the place to look - there's all sorts of stuff you can get listed there. Passports, fake degrees, protected species, illegal porn, drugs - prescription or otherwise, or alternatively you can get nicely screwed over by some Nigerians, a loan scam, a work from home scam, webcam and dating scams, etc etc etc etc.
What you pretty much can't do is use Craigslist as it was intended.
It's a gift to tabloid journalists and lawyers, and it's astounding that it hasn't got seriously bad press yet.
Re:Santa says "tons of money? ho ho ho!" (Score:4, Interesting)
It's like my friend in dental school. She says she doesn't want to make a lot of money, she wants to help people. So when she graduates, she's going to spend a year in south America building houses for poor people. I told her that if she really wanted to help, she would work in the US and use half her salary to hire a dozen workers in her place to work in her place and build many more houses than she could ever build.
*imagine vaccinating everyone on the planet for all diseases which require human hosts at the same time. Craig would be a better man if he capitalized and chipped in to that fund.
Re:Craigslist is the other extreme (Score:3, Interesting)
Craigslist is a great interface. Easy to use for anybody regardless of computer experience, OS or browser version.
Craig, don't change a damn thing.
SPF (Score:3, Interesting)