Craigslist Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
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. It is a for-profit company with social goals.Having observed people (on the Net, The WELL, and Usenet) helping one another in a friendly, social and trusting community way, Newmark decided to create something similar for local San Francisco events. Soon word-of-mouth and popular demand led to the addition of new categories, and "the list" became large enough to demand the use of a list server (majordomo), which required a name. Friends started calling it "Craig's list", and the name stuck. craigslist was once renamed listfoundation.org for a brief period of time in 1999.
craigslist has since grown to be one of the most heavily-used sites in the world, with new sub-sections for 57 large "metros" in the US, Canada, UK, Ireland and Australia, including New York, London, Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, Portland, Washington, DC, and Vancouver. It receives 1 billion page views per month from 5 million unique visitors.
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 make Craigslist non-commercial. In lieu of real banner advertising, craigslist staff for a short time humourously posted mock-banner ads.
Newmark was later joined by other people with new ideas. In 2001, Craigslist Foundation was founded as a nonprofit organization. It accepts charitable donations, and rather than directly funding organizations, it produces face-to-face events and offers online resources to help grassroots organizations get off the ground and contribute real value to the community.
craigslist operates with only 14 staff. 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). Its revenue was approximately $10 million in 2003.
In 2003, a documentary was made, 24 hours on craigslist by Michael Ferris Gibson.
On August 13, 2004, Craig announced on his blog that auction giant eBay had purchased a 25% stake in the company from a former principal. Some fans of craigslist have expressed concern that this development will affect the site's longtime non-commercial nature, but it remains to be seen what ramifications the change will actually have.
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