How Copyright Law Changed Music
ISP Hesitate Over Spam Filtering

'Organically Grown' Nerd Values

Culture

from the mmm-fresh-and-yummy dept

Wed, Jun 2nd 2004 9:31pm — Michael Ho
Mark Glaser has written up an interesting piece on the growth of Craigslist.org and the competition it gives similar but more commercial ventures. According to Craig himself, Craiglist is run as a "non-commercial" site based on "nerd values" -- where things are done for the effect on the world, not necessarily the pocketbook. Apparently, Craig has turned down some lucrative offers for ads and buyouts. And after doing so, he's continured to slowly build up a comfortable (& profitable) business that threatens major newspapers. Depending on how you look at it, classified ads are being "stolen away" from major newspapers by this Bay-Area-grown community. On the other hand, many of the ads that go up on Craigslist might never have been placed in a newspaper for various reasons. Craigslist doesn't publish its earnings, but even assuming it has none, it has definitely succeeded in its "nerdy" goal of changing some small part of the world.
4 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  • identicon
    dorpus, 2 Jun 2004 @ 11:32pm

    Now come the wolves

    Just wait till all the spammers, scammers, find out about craigslist en masse, and create an unenforceable quagmire of false advertisements. Craigslist will be in the dilemma of doing nothing and letting it go to rot, or creating ever more stringent security measures that turn off most users.

    Chat room services have tried the open model, and it didn't work.

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Adam, 3 Jun 2004 @ 9:31am

      Re: Now come the wolves

      5 million unique visitors / month ... how much more 'en masse' do you want? They have their share of BS ads and they deal quite well with it. I don't think they'll have any appreciable problems in the future that they haven't already...

      [ link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        dorpus, 3 Jun 2004 @ 12:29pm

        Re: Now come the wolves

        There's still a difference between being a fringe/insider phenomenon at 5 million, or being mainstream in the sense of posing serious competition to newspapers. When it becomes mainstream, it will get overrun by the bad apples.

        [ link to this | view in chronology ]

        • identicon
          Anonymous Coward, 4 Jun 2004 @ 10:58am

          Re: Now come the wolves

          Maybe it never will, or will never have to.

          There is such a thing in this world as a business that's doing well enough, people that don't need a sack of money to do things. There is such a thing as providing a useful service to people with integrity.

          I could put 10,000 different banners and ads all over my own site. But the single advertiser we have is relevant, and brings us enough money consistently. Makes the end experience better for our users. We provide real, useful information, and everyone wins.

          Doesn't mean we don't try to be profitable. It means we don't have or need to be greedy. I think Craigslist is on a similar track, and totally on the right one.

          [ link to this | view in chronology ]


How Copyright Law Changed Music
ISP Hesitate Over Spam Filtering
Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

Friday

19:39 Important Announcement: Techdirt Is Migrating To A New Platform (0)
More arrow

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.