The Craig’s List “Community”
In reading articles, over and over again I would come to this word: Community. The purpose of Craig’s list is to create an online community for swapping items, ideas, job opportunities, etc.. In the mid 90s, founder Craig Newmark would give talks about the internet, saying that “this is how we should do business someday.” Perhaps someday was sooner than he thought and perhaps he was also made more of a contribution to that reality than he would have expected. It started as a small email chain that grew more and more with demands. He believes that “What [he does] is give people a voice and that’s powerful.” I believe it also started with just a focus on techie jobs and opportunities out of the San Francisco Bay Area. The current business model is $25 for job ads ($75 in San Francisco) and everything else is free. So from a profit stand point, he makes money off of job listings but by having everything else he drives an incredible amount of traffic to the site. He intends to “humanize and democratize the internet” by connecting people in an easier and more efficient way. It has grown to be worth $80 million in 2008 revenue and to be worth $5 billion overall. Not bad for starting out as a small contact list.
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