Friday, November 19, 2004

Craig's list is 'da shiznizzle'!

Just how awesome is Craig's List?

I listed a dining room set, nintendo 64 system, and an old speedboat the other night and got 50 responses in 14 hours, and had the deal completed on the set and the system in 24 hours. My mind is officially blown. Of course I've been aware of Craig's list for the last year, but this wasn't the visceral 'glass-dagger-in-my-eye' awareness that I have now. I have to now ask...why would anyone list in newspaper classifieds?

Some quick background... Craig's list is a online community started nearly 10 years ago by one Craig Newmark (of course he's got a blog.) With 800 million page views each month—more than 450 hits per second—craig's list has skyrocketed in popularity, enjoying an almost cultlike following. Nielsen//NetRatings says the traffic at Craigslist ranks in the top 20 U.S. general interest portals, with the likes of MSN, Yahoo and AOL. Users are free to list things for sale and rent, with the sole source of revenue coming from S.F. employers who pay for job listings.

Recently ebay got into the picture via a friend's selling of shares that were a gift from Craig himself. It's a low level entry into operations, but the site still feels personally run, thank goodness.

Some good reads on the subject:
USA Today (9/28/2004)
SF Gate (8/5/2003)
Time (9/27/1999)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Craigslist is really useful if you live in one of the major regions it covers. I used to live in the San Francisco bay area and have used it a number of times. Unfortunately, if you don't live in a big metro (my current situation) that craigslist covers, there's nothing else like it.

I've created my own website for free local classifieds that covers the entire united states and yet you can specify your own region - be it a zip code, city, county, or state.