Online Personals Watch Interview - Craigslist Founder, Craig Newmark

OPW INTERVIEW -- Apr 21, 2006 -- Craig Newmark is the founder of Craigslist.  He has built a powerhouse of a site on sheer utility, pure goodwill, and a groundswell of viral word-of mouth.  Craigslist is a phenomonen and Craig is one of my personal heroes. 

Why did you start Craigslist?
In 1994, I was at Charles Schwab; I was evangelizing the net for the brokerage industry.  I saw a lot of people helping each other out and I figured I should do some of that.  So, in early 1995, I started a simple 'cc' list telling friends about arts and technology events, and that was the beginning of Craigslist.  People asked for more stuff on the list and I did that and I got more feedback and I did that, and that's how it is today.  We talk to people, we find out what's needed, what's useful, and we do it.

Just how popular is it now?
We seem to be getting about 4 billion page views a month and we're in a little over 200 cities, in five countries with 8 million posts per month.

How is the international growth coming along?
It's slow but steady.  We are not where we want to be in terms of multiple language support.  But, word of mouth works and we're growing.

Why not charge for personals?
Five or so years ago, I asked people what it was they'd like us to charge for. The answer was to charge those people who would otherwise be paying more, for less effective advertising.  The consensus was to specifically charge for real estate and job postings.  So we charge brokers and recruiters and soon will charge apartment brokers for rental listings in NYC; although they specifically asked us to charge them to improve quality by reducing redundancy.  People have suggested we charge for personals as a way to improve quality; but there's no consensus.

What prompted the creation of the casual encounters, more racy personals section?
People saw that racy ads were being posted in the more conventional sections and people suggested we trade an alternative to get the racy ads focused in one or two places.  And that's been effective.

Have you been surprised by some of the posts?
These days, after about 13 years in San Francisco and going to the Fulsom Street Fair; not much surprises me.

What do you have in store for Craigslist and for the personals section in 2006?
We do need to improve customer service by giving more power to the people who use our site.  People can help us out by flagging inappropriate ads for removal.  We are driven by the culture of trust we've developed with our communities and that's another reason why I personally do full time customer service and I intend to do substantial customer service only as long as I live, after that, it's over !!

Comments

[Priit Vaikmaa]

pretty interesting industry:

"Craigslist is sitting on a potential gold mine of revenue, if only it would abandon its communist manifesto," says Eric Baker, co-founder of StubHub.com, an online ticket-sales site. Baker analyzed Craigslist's Internet traffic and transaction volume and conservatively estimates it could have had revenues of $550 million this year

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2005/12/12/8363113/index.htm

---

Another:

Classified advertising is a $100 billion-plus industry worldwide. And it's changing fast. As classifieds evolve, a select few companies will make a lot of money. A few more will make a little money. And, in the end, a lot of companies won't be able to compete.

- http://classifiedintelligence.com/?id=home

[Mark Brooks]

But, the trick to word of mouth is, not to reem users, to truly be there to help the masses. Craig does customer service for goodness sakes. The entire site's success rides on a wave of goodwill.

A million people have pitched Craig on making more money with Craigslist...but he has abstained. He's just eking out $12 million+ a year from job wanted postings. Profitable, sleekly simple, wonderfully high integrity...and users rave about Craigslist. We can all learn something from this web 1.0 company for web 2.0.

Word of mouth rules. Advertising costs will ramp beyond the means of most startup communities in the future. Check out www.womma.org for word of mouth marketing inspiration/education.

Mark Brooks
editor, onlinepersonalswatch.com

[nicholas garcia]

I have been on match.com and it has to be one of the worst sites I have encountered ! The woman all seem down to earth until you write one and she see's you dont make 100.000$ a year all of the sudden you might get a rejection letter,If your lucky stating "we are not a good match"Even if you match all 20-22 times which is the maximum comparison available.These broads wouldn't know a good man if one bit them in the ass! O.K. I feel Better,Let those chicks keep looking for mr. goodbar,let me tell you he does not exist and if he did hae would not be on match.com!!

[Yasmin Mian]

I've been using internet dating for a while, and up until recently been on the major subscription sites (match.com/datingdirect.com). However, I've recently stumbled upon Craigslist and despite a few odd messages, I've met a few rather interesting people off there.

Only negative aspect is that I keep getting flagged as 'spam'!, men seem to dislike me for some reason.

http://www.picturetrail.com/scientistyasmin

[Fred]

Its not communism if he decides he does not want to charge. That's the nice thing about capitalism, CHOICE! If we forced either choice, now THAT would be communism! ( I choose the word AUTHORITARIAN...its a much more useful term since all government types converge to it )

[Jaya Kumar Patchala]

Craigslist has definitely shown the way for sevarl classified ads websites. However many of them arent a big success. Whether they charge or not. We need to appreciate the fact that it just didnt survive, but its in a leading classsifieds site. Many people love its text style interface and ads display. Something that comforts many people and ofcourse a lot of utility.

[Jay Reiss, M.S.W.]

I use Craigslist everyday - for both myself and my clients. I've been involved with Online Dating for nearly 20 years and have witnessed the explosion of dating sites on the Internet. Craigslist out-performs most of the paid dating sites I've used - including some of big name brand sites too. I've had more meetings resulting in more relationships from Craigslist than from nearly anywhere else. One of the reasons for this is the disarming simplicity and easy access to posting there. And one of the greatest benefits is the virtually unlimited space you've got to work with. With a creatively written 500-word Personal Ad, a well-conceived headline and a photo, it's easy to dominate the dating category of your choice. Even in a small town, my hit rate is higher than it's been on large national dating sites.

Unfortunately, like many things with easy access, spambots and scammers post Personal Ads too. But they're easy to spot and very easy to filter, once you understand how they write and post their messages.

Typically, women get much more replies than do men, but men tend to get a better quality response which more than makes up for the difference in my book.

Best regards,

Jay Reiss, M.S.W.

[Linette]

Not all classifield sites want money, here is an example: http://toovalismaal.com/. People can look for jobs all over the world and apply. I think that it should be for free.
I have used craiglist only 2 times. I was pleased :)

[free online dating]

I agree with mark, the success of any company is word of mouth. I think many make the mistake of thinking that selling yourself means to boost about your accomplishments and what you have done and can do. what it should be about is other people, not yourself, if you help others and offer good customer service with your customers, you should care about your members, you should be selling yourself by showing what you are doing for other people and how you can help them, whether that be with dealing with abuse from other members, or backing a charity event one of your members is holding. Word of mouth is no good just by itself, it has to be positive word of mouth