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."
Santa says "tons of money? ho ho ho!" (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course they're missing out on making tons of money.
However, whether they're missing out in a sense which matters to them personally, presumably not, since they've obviously chosen to do what they wish to do; so MarketWatch is basically contemplating its own navel.
> No word on whether that income is enough to pay 24 salaries and data center fees for
> hosting a major Internet site.
Apparently it must be, or they wouldn't still have jobs and the sites would have closed down.
Re:Santa says "tons of money? ho ho ho!" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Santa says "tons of money? ho ho ho!" (Score:5, Interesting)
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Maybe many of the 24 or so craiglist bunch know the difference.
There are people who end up super rich because what they like is making yet more money.
But there are also people who end up super rich just by doing what they like even if it's not about making more money.
If you like to make people happy and they give you lots of money in return, and most other people don't mind and won't mind, exce
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.
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As an example giving food to Somalia helps them eat, but it also drives local farmers out of business ensuring aid dependency will continue. In my opinion the guy who won a Nobel peace prize recently because realized that these people c
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"Give a man a fire, and you keep him warm for the night. Set a man on fire, and you keep him warm for the rest of his life."
I think Gates is focusing on disease, not on corn-dumping. Your point about donating for economic development being more important than donating for long-term food aid is understood most well-informed people. But we are talking about vaccinating people for d
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No, I don't see that happening. Most of these people won't get vaccinated unless its free. The type of vaccination required to eliminate a disease entirely will never happen without some serious welfare.
Also, it is important that drug company patents are honored--they fund research into getting new types of drugs! That means 1st world prices for the 3rd world in man
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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.
I live in Uruguay, and they do that here, "un techo por Uruguay". They are building wooden houses (we use brick houses here, because of the climate) for the poor. The only sensible thing would be to make a fund, to help people buy materials, and give them some free help in the design of the houses. Instead of that, they are providing free labor (also known as "dumping") in a country where there are lots of good, cheap, unemployed construction workers, and building houses hat do not adapt to our reality or
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Has the failure in the 1950s production of polio vaccine been corrected since then? And since everyone in the US was vaccinated for polio, and that caused 20% of the population of the US to develop cancer, why hasn't anyone told the trial lawyers about it?
Are your claims of vaccination side-effect related to the vaccines themselves, or just to flawed manufacturing processes? Are those processes still in use?
Forgive me if I am skeptical of your (not-a
Re:Santa says "tons of money? ho ho ho!" (Score:4, Insightful)
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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).
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It takes no particular talent to sell a dollar for 50 cents.
I don't think so. (Score:5, Insightful)
If what they've done is so easy, why doesn't someone else just create a different but similarly-oriented site, monetize it, and laugh all the way to the bank?
They're providing a service that people want, and are apparently making ends meet while they do it. That's hardly "selling a dollar for 50 cents." Many sites can't even manage to do that.
What MarketWatch is arguing, is that perhaps they could make even more money than they're doing. Perhaps they could. But perhaps they'd also drive away some of their audience and leave themselves open to the 'next' Craigslist.
Just because they're not making risky business decisions doesn't make them fools; I thought anyone who'd survived the dot-com burst would realize that maybe a conservative stance is underrated when it comes to building a brand and business.
Re:Santa says "tons of money? ho ho ho!" (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, I've worked for a small start-up kind of business that was "missing out" on "tons of money". Basically, the owners could have sold it to a much larger company, which then would have run the company into the ground. Or, they could have adopted the same practices that their competitors were using, and made a lot more money over the short term.
However, what kept the company working the way it did, what kept their customers happy, had always been the practices that cost them a bit more or didn't make as much money in the short term. What made it a good company was that it was a small company, without a lot of red tape or bureaucracy. The practices that made the owners, employees, and customers like the company were exactly the practices that a large company or a company driven by short-term profits would not do. In short, they could have sold out at any time, and become not better than their competition for the sake of short-term gains, but chose not to because they wanted to do a good job.
I wish more companies worked like that.
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?"
Self interest is not greed (Score:5, Insightful)
The economy moves rapidly. It is not always obvious where your money will be coming from ten years down the road (when your skill set has been made obsolete or your industry has been outsourced or what-have-you). Having a fat pile of money ensures that your needs will still be met.
So I don't know that it is fair to say that our society "worships" money. The fact is we need it, so we put a lot of effort into getting it. That's just the way it is.
So, while the business of making a lot of money quickly may seem greedy, we must admit that there are very compelling economic (and even personal) motivations for attempting to do this. The sooner you have a large nestegg, the sooner you can rest easy in the face of an unpredictable future.
Resisting this urge, and instead accepting a slower income (and along with it the risk of running out of money in the future), for the benefit of others, is noble. Does that make a failure to do this evil? Are there two polar extremes with no middle ground?
IMO, providing for your needs, now and in the future, is not greed so much as self-interest. This is the primary motivator behind a capatilist society, which is the one in which we live. I won't deny the nobility of self-sacrifice, nor will I deny that there is a point at which accumulation stops being self-interest and transforms into greed. However, I will also deny that self-interest is the same as "worshipping money" or that trying to make money quickly is greedy or evil.
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Maybe, if you are addicted to cocaine.
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It's not a matter of nobility and self-sacrifice, but rather an issue of wanting to build something instead of tearing it apart. Your notion of "self-interest", i.e. desire for money, does not necessarily need to be the primary motivator in order to be a capitalist society. Capitalism is an economic system in which the government does not attempt to control industry. The intent is to turn natural greed, which occurs anyway, into a beneficial impulse. However, there's nothing contrary to capitalism when
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I can't tell, do you think we disagree?
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The company still exists and is doing quite well, specifically because they're considered the high-quality company in their field. You shouldn't misunderstand so much-- they are making tons of money, but they're also "missing out" on "tons of money". In other words, they're making a tidy profit, but they could be considered to be missing opportunities for a lot more money. The reasoning isn't altruistic. The owners like their company, and want to keep running it. They want to continue to grow and be a
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They make millions of dollars a year. Even while EBay hinders them in Europe to promote their own offering (EBay owns 30% of craigslist). I work with Craig's biggest competitor outside the US, who has been approached by EBay. So we have some idea how much Craig can sell out for. But why should he? His growth is still spectacular and he's bringing in millions. If you don't think a multi-million dollar private business with only 24 employees is consi
eBay hindering how? (Score:2)
I'm confused. eBay doesn't own a controlling interest in Craigslist; they're only 25 or 30% at most, purchased from a departing executive. That doesn't give them much of a say in operations. How is Craigslist being hindered? They seem to be active in quite a few European cities.
I'd imagine that it might be tough to gain traction in a foreign market, since the only way I've ever heard of CL 'advertising' was by
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I don't know how they did it, but when ebay wanted a more monetized site, they seemed to prevent craigslist from using domestic languages and
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There's nothing like asking for help regarding a business from someone who actually wants, really wants, to solve your problem, and isn't just there for the paycheck.
Just goes to show... (Score:2)
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Minor error in summary (Score:5, Informative)
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Yes and no. Since your ads age very quickly, you have to refresh them more often than other online ad venues (dice/monster/etc). Still a good deal tho.
Large Corporations? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Large Corporations? (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.craigslist.org/about/press/ebay.stake.
Craigslist didn't have any choice in that.
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I've always wondered colon why do some people um add unecessary verbalizations to their writings question mark.
If they charged... (Score:2, Insightful)
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If they charged, what would separate them from every other site out there that does the same thing? They have more of a place on the internet by doing what they are doing right now. If they charged, their niche would go away.
When you think about CraigsList is the original successful social networking site. It allows people to exchange goods and services with people in their general area or anywhere, and isn't cluttered up with useless nonsense or ads. It may not have all the "functionality" of someplace but it doesn't need to. It's more a small town, as opposed to a big city.
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.
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And all those other people I see posting, they're the legions of the undead, right?
Usenet may not be as busy as it once was, but it's not dead or in danger of dying any time soon. So no film for you at 11.
They are true philanthropists (Score:4, Insightful)
Cringely says... (Score:4, Insightful)
Obviously the question arrises as to whether that's just the natural course of evolution and it's time for the dinosoaurs for find a new bussiness model. That's too glib a response for two reasons. First, it's a matter of huge consequence to the nation and to democracy in general to have a plethora of news sources that get their profits from the masses directly so they are not beholden to a few key advertisers. Second, craig's list is a temprary anamoly. It might be said to be a loss leader for whatever is going to replace it. But someday it's going to die or get forced out of bussiness. For example, as has been widely predicted when net neutrality goes away people running big sites are going to have to start paying the ISPs for access to their customers. Or maybe Craig's list will go public or it's owners finally decide to cash in on the latent ten billion dollar value they have.
In any case we won't have free classified ads forever. But in the mean time we might loose all the newspapers.
I'm not happy with that trade. Free does not always mean the results are good. It's like someone was giving you free internet explorers for a while and you nearly lost netscape.
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If the only valuable thing in newspapers is the classifieds, then there's no reason for them to exist, is there?
Re:Cringely says... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Craigs list is profitable, so why exactly would they go away?
If they did, others wuold appear. It's not that difficult to do.
"First, it's a matter of huge consequence to the nation and to democracy in general to have a plethora of news sources that get their profits from the masses directly so they are not beholden to a few key advertisers."
HAHAHAHahahaha... wait, let me catch my breath... whew..ok.
Are you seriously saying*gigglesnort* that newspapers ar
Flagging = Good (Score:2, Insightful)
you will find that a spam, junk or get rich quick scheme gets flagged quickly and removed.
The flagging feature is one of the best parts of Craigslist IMHO.
I choose Craig's List over eBay (Score:3, Informative)
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But watch out for the scammers.
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I'm sure they are spammers/scammers looking to for a valid email address.
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.
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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.
It's just a matter of time (Score:2)
Great guys (Score:5, Interesting)
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Does "bookmaker" mean the same thing in Europe that it does in America? Do you manufacture reading materials, or place bets on sporting events?
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.
Nitpicking For Dummies (Score:2, Insightful)
Okay, would in a world where money is widely worshipped meet your needs?
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I assume that most of us aren't independently wealthy. Even if you are, that money didn't just fall out of the sky. I'd hope that most of us aren't leeching off of the state. Unless you're at a public internet terminal right now, I shudder to think my tax dollars are paying for your computer and broadband connection.
Craigslist is a wonderful service, and god knows I'm a supporter of F/OSS-esque activities; however, this world runs on t
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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.
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I know that particularly among the over-40 set, the brand name of the local newspaper is a lot more valuable than "Craigslist" ("Who is 'Craig' and why does he have a 'list'?"). But their online classified site is atrocious. Seriously, it makes me want to just stab my eyes out. Up until fairly recently, it wasn't even searchable, and the information in each ad was the same paltry words as in the print versio
A non-monopoly monopoly (Score:2)
One of the models is a natural monopoly with no monopoly pricing power. This normally doesn't happen in reality, but Craigslist MIGHT be the perfect example of it.
It assumes that because of economies of scale (where the point of diminishing returns from increasing marginal costs exists on the curve outside of full market... essentially, fixed costs get spread out, but we assume that marginal costs decrease for a point,
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And the newspapers have no one to blame for this but themselves. All Craig & co. did was identify a service that the newspaper classifieds industry was doing a poor job providing, and did it better.
Imagine if the newspaper companies had embraced the Internet and started offering free online classified ads ten years ago. There never would have been a
Re:greater good or greater bad...? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Why No Link to Craig's List? (Score:5, Insightful)
Granted this one is an easy one to find, but in general, why are News sites so stingy with links to what they are reporting on.
Not providing pictures of some marvelous device they are reporting on is also a major gripe
BTW
Craig's List [craigslist.org]
Of course, if they did try to monetize it ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally, I just see Craiglist as a web emulation of Usenet, with a few enhancements like the ability to easily include pictures, edit your posts (cancels haven't worked on Usenet in a long time,) flag offensive posts, a web interface (which makes it easier to use for the non-technically inclined) and management that's all together in one place so things can be changed (for good or bad) a lot quicker and easier than they can on Usenet.
They did a pretty good job with it, and did a really good job with only trying to charge the people who were really willing to pay -- which brought in enough money to pay for things (I assume) but not to alienate their users. If craiglist were to try and require that everybody have accounts and charge for them, most of their users would just leave, and somebody else would probably re-implement craiglist somewhere else.
In any event, Craiglist gives up a lot of the features of Usenet, but for the most part these are features that the users have decided that they don't need -- or at least they seem to have decided that with their feet, because they're using Craiglist rather than Usenet. (Perhaps they're not even aware of Usenet, or their ISP doesn't offer a news server because it thinks if it does, it has to offer alt.binaries.* But that's another matter entirely ...)
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The only problem with CL is that it's too regionalized. There are no
Whenever they want (Score:2)
Yet once you have billions, your whole life changes. You have to consult security experts about where you - and your relatives - can travel without fear of kidnapping. Even your oldest, closest friends start hitting you up for investments.
So Craig and crew have the best of both worlds: normal lives for now, with plenty of social standing, in a nice city - and billions available for their retir
I like CraigsList (Score:2)
Whats wrong with a little greed? (Score:2)
Re:Whats wrong with a little greed? (Score:4, Insightful)
Nothing is wrong with greed. But, conversely, what's wrong with a little socialism?
The attitude that emenates from CL staffers (and is reflected in their users) is: There are lots of places to get your greed on, let's have one that is more happy-hippy just-a-bunch-o-friends swap-n-shop shoot-the-shit kinda place.
THAT, in my arrogant opinion, is why Craigslist has been so phenomenally successful. It is a pleasing balance between capitalism and social community
Re:Whats wrong with a little greed? (Score:5, Insightful)
I know slashdot's readership has a decidedly socalist leaning about many things, but what is wrong with people deciding to profit from what they have created? Why is foregoing said profit considered "noble"?
Nothing. It's not really profit that's the issue, it's mass-commercialization and expanding a site beyond the original scope, and the drive not to just make some money, but to make as much money as you possibly can.
Those goals often times are in direct opposition to providing a usefull service to the community. There's nothing noble about not making money, or anything wrong with making money. There is something noble about putting your goals of service above the goals of profit. It doesn't mean that Craigslist can't make a profit, it just means you don't throw everything else away for a drive to make more and more money.
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In fact, one of the major aspects of socialism that I dislike is that it seem to me that it discourages charity.
Me deciding to give my money to the poor is NOT the same as my community deciding to give my money to the poor.
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What you do with your money is your choice, what I do with mine is my choice. No one should tell you, or me, or anyone else what they should do with their money, regardless of wether its for what they deem the "greater good"
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Or it could be (Score:2)
Not to bust your cynicism but there are patents .. (Score:2)
Patent 7062466 [patentmonkey.com].
Everyone love's the Internet
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.
Summary is incorrect... (Score:2, Informative)
That's incorrect. craigslist charges for real estate postings in the New York City area only. Additionally, they charge below-market rates for job postings in 3 markets (SF, LA and NY I believe).
They are a profitable business. They have, however, chosen to throttle how much profit they suck from the thing.
Slashdot on the other hand ... (Score:5, Insightful)
"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.
Slashdot, on the other hand, sold out to OSDN, and has never been the same since. They could've done worse than OSDN as corporate overlords, but still, there are a lot of ex-dotters out there who miss the early days.
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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
When did it become a crime to be satisfied? (Score:2, Insightful)
Greed (Score:2, Insightful)
Surely greed is demanding everything for nothing as if website owners owe you something.
It's nice that craigslist offers so many serives for free, but personally, I wouldn't think any less of him or his website if they were to charge or place ads on the site. He has bills to pay and mouths to feed just like the rest of us.
"unique" is distinct from "distinct" (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that you mean "distinct" visitors here,
meaning that some of them came more than once
but all their visits counted as one.
A "unique" visitor would either mean that there
was just one visitor, or that each of those visitors
was the only person like him or her. The first is
not the case, and the second is always true until
we start cloning humans or something.
Mathematically, if x and y are distinct, then
they are not equal. If x is unique, it is distinct
from all other objects. Generally, one says that
x is unique after defining a set of objects that have
some properties and then showing that the set contains
exactly one member, namely x.
Whenever you see the adjective "unique" applied to
a set of objects, it's probably being misused.
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Craigslist is the other extreme (Score:2)
Usually when something is an the extreme of a s
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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.
The only thing.... (Score:2)
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.
SPF (Score:3, Interesting)
What is this judgmental dreck? (Score:2)
Re:Sexual Deviants and hookers (Score:5, Insightful)
That might possibly be the majority of the traffic (I wouldn't know). However, I've gotten a few very good jobs through Craigslist, and I've spoken with HR people who say they've had better luck with Craigslist than places like Monster.com. I've also found apartments on Craigslist, and I've had friends who've bought furniture and bicycles and all sort of stuff (some of it "free" by just going to pick it up).
I'm sure that, like the internet in general, you can find many disturbing things on Craigslist, but also just like the rest of the internet, you can find many useful things, too.
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Not that I have a problem with either, but the majority of the traffic has to be to the escorts, swinging, and deciant listings.
Those are certainly what shocks people, but a quick look at numbers doesn't really support that theory. For Minneapolis I see 28,000 personals listings (most of which have no "deviant" component to them), 78,000 for sale listings, 12,000 services (a small percentage of which includes hookers), 17,000 housing listings, and 7,000 jobs listings. The numbers in each category vary with
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So from the perspective, they are taking the high road in that they chose to make less money to be sure there vision holds true.