What Craigslist is about…
Craigslist is a centralized network of online communities, featuring free classified advertisements (with jobs, internships, housing, personals, for sale/barter/wanted, services, community, gigs, resume, and pets categories) and forums on various topics.
The service was founded in 1995 by Craig Newmark for the San Francisco Bay Area. Having observed people helping one another in a friendly, social and trusting community way on the Internet, the WELL, and Usenet, and feeling isolated as a relative newcomer to San Francisco, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark decided to create something similar for local events.
The first postings debuted in early 1995. The initial technology encountered some limits, so by June of 1995 majordomo had been installed and the mailing list “craigslist” resumed operations. Most of the early postings were submitted by Newmark and were notices of social events of interest to software and Internet developers living and working in San Francisco.
Soon, word of mouth led to rapid growth. Both subscribers and the number of postings grew rapidly. There was no moderation, so Newmark was surprised when people started using the mailing list for non-event postings.[citation needed] People trying to fill technical positions found that the list was a good way to reach people with the skills they were looking for. This led to the addition of a category for “jobs”. User demand for more categories caused the list of categories to grow. About this time, community members started asking for a web interface. Newmark enlisted the help of volunteers and contractors to create a website user interface for the different mailing list categories.[citation needed] Needing a domain name for this, Craig registered “craigslist.org” (and later, “craigslist.com”, to prevent the name “craigslist” from being used for other purposes).[citation needed] About this time, Newmark realized that the site was growing so fast that he could stop working as a software engineer and work full time running craigslist.
By April 2000, there were nine employees working out of Newmark’s apartment on Cole Street in San Francisco. After incorporation as a private for-profit company in 1999, Craigslist expanded into nine more U.S. cities in 2000, four each in 2001 and 2002, and 14 in 2003. As of September 2007, Craigslist had established itself in approximately 450 cities in 50 countries.
As of 2007, Craigslist operates with a staff of 24 people. Its sole source of revenue is paid job ads in select cities ($75 per ad for the San Francisco Bay Area; $25 per ad for New York, Los Angeles, San Diego, Boston, Seattle, Washington D.C., Chicago and recently Portland, Oregon) and paid broker apartment listings in New York City ($10 per ad).
As of today Craigslist.org
- is the 9th most visited website in the United States.
- is in 450 cities worldwide.
- receives over 7 billion page views per month… which translates into more than 20 million visitors a month.
With over thirty million new classified advertisements each month, Craigslist is the leading classifieds service in any medium. The site receives over two million new job listings each month, making it one of the top job boards in the world. The classified advertisements range from traditional buy/sell ads and community announcements, to personal ads and even erotic services.
