dticorp
Joined: 19 Aug 2006
Posts: 1756
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| Posted: Mon Jun 16, 2008 12:50 am Post subject: Boston Globe: Craigslist's unorthodox path |
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Boston Globe: Craigslist's unorthodox path
Craig Newmark was tapping away at the keys of his Lenovo laptop in a hotel conference room in Waltham, dealing with problems on his website. He scrubs racist comments from its discussion boards and hounds New York City realtors who post apartments for rent that don't exist. And he's incredibly efficient at it: An e-mail I'd sent to him got a reply in less than three minutes.
Newmark, who is customer service representative and founder of Craigslist Inc., didn't start the website as a business, but it has grown into an utterly unusual one. With just 25 employees in San Francisco, the deliberately spartan site operates in 450 cities around the world and is expected to bring in $81 million in revenue this year, according to the analyst firm Classified Intelligence LLC, despite charging its users for almost nothing. According to the ranking service Alexa, Craigslist is the seventh most-visited US website, just ahead of Amazon.com.
On his recent visit to Boston, the second city where Craigslist launched, in 2000, I had a chance to chat with Newmark and then interview him onstage in front of an audience. Newmark has the brainy, self-deprecating wit of the young Woody Allen; he's a nebbish who knows how to crank out software code.
We talked about the company's unorthodox approach to business, his plans for the future, and his interest in how journalism can be reinvigorated online. And I tried to get him to talk about Craigslist's on-going legal tussle with eBay Inc., which owns 28 percent of the company.
Anyone who has sold an old sofa, found a summer sublet, or hired a carpenter on Craigslist knows about the site's culture. People are generally honest. They show up when they say they're going to show up. They like when you post pictures of things you're trying to sell, and they pay in cash. Things happen fast - an unneeded microwave posted at lunchtime on Saturday may be sold before nightfall. The only listings that carry a fee are apartment listings in New York ($10), and job listings in 11 cities, including Boston ($25 to $75).
Rest of the article here:
http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2008/06/15/craigslists_unorthodox_path/
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