Craigslist

It\'s a bit strange to give 3 stars to Craigslist, a company that I love, but when I consider Craiglist from a long-term business perspective, I have concerns. I will say upfront that this is a luke-warm 3 stars, and if this rating was based on my love of the service, it would easily be 5 stars. Now that I\'ve assuaged my own guilt, I\'ll get started. <br /> <br />First, let me address what my concerns are not about. <br /> ... More >>

It\'s a bit strange to give 3 stars to Craigslist, a company that I love, but when I consider Craiglist from a long-term business perspective, I have concerns. I will say upfront that this is a luke-warm 3 stars, and if this rating was based on my love of the service, it would easily be 5 stars. Now that I\'ve assuaged my own guilt, I\'ll get started. <br /> <br />First, let me address what my concerns are not about. <br /> <br /><b>I don\'t think Craigslist has a credible competitor today.</b> Kijiji as I wrote about in an earlier review is not really a legitimate threat. It is a lame attempt by eBay to remain relevant. Read my review of Kijiji - \"Pigs and Kijiji - Neither Will Fly\" here: http://www.chubbybrain.com/companies/kijiji/reviews/amyz <br /> <br />Google has tried and countless others, but there is no real threat to Craigslist (yet). <br /> <br /><b>I don\'t think their revenue in the short-term will be pressured.</b> They don\'t charge for a majority of their services and where they do charge (some cities for some types of posts), the effectiveness and immediacy of response is much better than alternatives as far as I\'ve seen (other places on the web or how about those things we call newspapers?) <br /> <br /><b>So why the 3 star rating?</b> <br /> <br />I guess I am ultimately skeptical if the Craigslist ethos can last. Craig Newmark doesn\'t want to grow the organization, work towards a liquidity event, do deals or build the next Google or Apple or whatever. <br /> <br />The company\'s current CEO, Jim Buckmaster, is continuing this philosophy. Here is a blog post detailing Mr. Buckmaster\'s management philosophy - click <a href=\"http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/622-the-management-philosophy-of-craigslist-ceo-jim-buckmaster\">here</a> to see it. <br /> <br />It\'s all quite remarkable, commendable and quite refreshing, but I guess my reservations about Craigslist mainly come from whether this mantra has an indefinite shelf-life. Not wanting to be rich and powerful is fine, but at some point does this management philosophy suggest indifference that manifests itself in a less than robust product. <br /> <br />The first thing Mr. Buckmaster says in his philosophy is \"Listen to what users want. Try to make the site faster and better.\" Yes the site works fine, and while a major redesign is not necessary, making the search a bit more robust and allowing filtering of results would be nice and quite useful especially since there are a lot of posts to filter through. And I doubt I\'m the first person to ask for or suggest this. So this is where the philosophy seems a bit disingenuous. \"Sure we want to do what\'s right, but if we don\'t, you should remember, we don\'t care about profits so it\'s okay.\" <br /> <br />Plus, the Craigslist model of not charging for things was great when the competitor was newspapers which did charge, but with the web\'s love of the \"we\'ll give it away for free and advertise around it business model\", the novelty of CL will wear off as will loyalty. I know Facebook and their app development partners have already started/attempted things on this front, and I can see this gaining traction. People already spend a lot of time on those sites, the postings would be free and the usability would be quite good I\'d imagine. <br /> <br />Again, I don\'t see the dethroning of Craigslist as classifieds-king happening anytime immediately, but instead, I see it happening sooner than most people think (how is that for fuzzy?). The descent will be slow and steady and it will not be a well-publicized failing like other web companies. Instead, Craigslist will atrophy away as others figure out how to do this right. <br /> <br />The beauty of this whole situation is that when this does ultimately happen, Craig Newmark and Jim Buckmaster won\'t care because they were never in it for the money anyways. << Less

Around 50 million unique visitors per month. The 8th largest number of page views worldwide for an English site. Well, Craigslist sounds good so far.<br /> <br /> But two dozen employees and a business plan not centered on \\\"maximizing revenues?\\\" What gives?<br /> <br /> There was quite a bit of uproar when CEO and President of Craigslist Jim Buckmaster declared to a UBS analyst that \\\"maximizin... More >>

Around 50 million unique visitors per month. The 8th largest number of page views worldwide for an English site. Well, Craigslist sounds good so far.<br /> <br /> But two dozen employees and a business plan not centered on \\\"maximizing revenues?\\\" What gives?<br /> <br /> There was quite a bit of uproar when CEO and President of Craigslist Jim Buckmaster declared to a UBS analyst that \\\"maximizing revenues\\\" was not even on the radar for Craigslist. Its employees had crunched the revenues for implementing Adsense, coming up with a sizable number, unsurprising considering the size of the site. However, because users didn\\\'t want it, it was never implemented.<br /> <br /> Craigslist is the epitome of successful branding. It charges $75 per job listing for the San Francisco Bay Area, $25 for New York, Los Angeles, San Diego, Boston, Seattle, Washington D.C., Chicago, and Portland, and $10 for apartment listings in New York City, with free listings in all other cities, looking practically like a non-profit. Yet, it\\\'s still generating up to an estimated $150 million a year in revenues and the closely guarded actual figure has never been revealed-for good reason. Buckmaster is simply hiding the capitalistic intentions behind Craigslist so that socially conscious users in New York and San Francisco will prefer to use its services while feeling like they\\\'re helping the underdog and giving it to the man.<br /> <br /> Now it makes sense that Craigslist never implemented Adsense. With Adsense, they would have made huge short-term profits, but it would have turned away their ferociously loyal core customers, decreasing its job listing revenues as employers turn away due to a shrinking user base. Then the Adsense revenues would dry up when its users started abandoning Craigslist, thinking that it had become corporate.<br /> <br /> So while it may seem like Craigslist is a non-profit, it\\\'s only trying to look that way with its .org extension and consumer centric strategy. Just remember the $150 million in revenues. It definitely doesn\\\'t cost that much to hire 24 people or rent the space and power the servers.<br /> << Less