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Craigslist Information
What is Craigslist? - Craig Newmark began Craigslist in 1995 as a series of emails, sent to friends, about local events in the San Francisco Bay Area, before becoming Craigslist.org, a web-based service in 1996. After incorporation as a private for-profit company in 1999, Craigslist expanded into nine more U.S. cities in 2000, four each in 2001 and 2002, and 14 in 2003. As of April 2009, Craigslist has established itself in approximately 570 cities in 50 countries.
As of 2009, Craigslist operates with a staff of 28 people. Its sole source of revenue is paid job ads in select cities – $75 per ad for the San Francisco Bay Area; $25 per ad for New York, Los Angeles, San Diego, Boston, Seattle, Washington D.C., Chicago, and Portland, Oregon – and paid broker apartment listings in New York City ($10 per ad). A $5 charge per erotic services listing was added in November 2008; the site intends to donate resultant revenue to charity. Craigslist suggests that the fees are intended largely to deter illicit activities, by requiring posters to create information available for subpoena.
Craigslist serves over twenty billion page views per month, putting it in 28th place overall among web sites world wide, ninth place overall among web sites in the United States (per Alexa.com on March 27, 2009), to over fifty million unique monthly visitors in the United States alone (per Compete.com on April 7, 2009). As of March 17, 2009 it was ranked 7th on Alexa. With over forty million new classified advertisements each month, Craigslist is the leading classifieds service in any medium. The site receives over one million new job listings each month, making it one of the top job boards in the world. The classified advertisements range from traditional buy/sell ads and community announcements, to personal ads and erotic services.
In December 2006, Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster told Wall Street analysts that Craigslist has little interest in maximizing profit, instead preferring to help users find cars, apartments, jobs, and dates. The company does not formally disclose financial or ownership information. Analysts and commentators have reported varying figures for its annual revenue, ranging from $10 million in 2004, $20 million in 2005, and $25 million in 2006 to possibly $150 million in 2007. It is believed to be owned principally by Newmark, Buckmaster, and eBay (the three board members). eBay owns approximately 25%, and Newmark is believed to own the largest stake.
Craigslist Background & History - Craigslist headquarters in San Francisco's Sunset District. Having observed people helping one another in friendly, social and trusting communal ways on the Internet, the WELL, and Usenet, and feeling isolated as a relative newcomer to San Francisco, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark decided to create something similar for local events. The first emailed San Francisco event listings debuted in early 1995. The initial technology encountered some limits, so by June 1995 majordomo had been installed and the mailing list "craigslist" resumed operations. Most of the early postings were submitted by Newmark and were notices of social events of interest to software and Internet developers living and working in San Francisco.
Soon, word of mouth led to rapid growth. Both subscribers and the number of postings grew rapidly. There was no moderation, so Newmark was surprised when people started using the mailing list for non-event postings. People trying to fill technical positions found that the list was a good way to reach people with the skills they were looking for. This led to the addition of a category for "jobs". User demand for more categories caused the list of categories to grow. About this time, community members started asking for a web interface. Newmark enlisted the help of volunteers and contractors to create a website user interface for the different mailing list categories. Needing a domain name for this, Craig registered "craigslist.org" (and later, "craigslist.com", to prevent the name "craigslist" from being used for other purposes).
About this time, Newmark realized that the Craigslist was growing so fast that he could stop working as a software engineer and work full time running craigslist. By April 2000, there were nine employees working out of Newmark's apartment on Cole Street in San Francisco. Newmark says that Craigslist works because it gives people a voice, a sense of community trust and even intimacy. Other factors he cites are consistency of down-to-earth values, customer service and simplicity. After first being approached about running banner ads, Newmark decided to keep Craigslist non-commercial. In 2002, Craigslist staff posted mock-banner ads throughout the site as an April Fools joke. To avoid illegal or inappropriate ads, Craigslist allows users to flag an ad that appears to violate the site's policies.
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