Ebay Buys Into Craiglist

unboring writes "The news out today morning is that eBay has bought a minority stake in Craigslist. Here's Craig's take on the whole issue. For those unaware of Craigslist, it was launched by Craig Newmark in 1995 in San Francisco, and is an online network of classified ads and forums aimed at people looking to find an apartment rental, meet friends or trade goods. For those unaware of eBay, get out from under that rock! Google news stories for your convenience here. So will Craigslist now become more corporate/evil? Personally, I've benefited a lot from Craigslist classifieds and I hope it doesn't lose its attitude."

Comments

Rocks

[Rank Amateur]

How much longer must we be hammered with the cliche, "get out from under that rock?"
If you don't know Doom, get out from under that rock! If you haven't heard of project X, get out from under that rock! If you haven't read articles about personality Y, get out from under that rock!

Get out from under that rock. The jaded journalist's quick cliche fix. Available at stores near you.

mod parent up -- he's right!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this moderated as troll? It's 100% correct. Oh, wait, I know -- Michael can't stand any criticism, even when it's correct.

And instantly....

[Monkelectric]

Craigslist begins to suck.

Re:Creeping Change?

[carbolic]

Consider how much eBay has to deal with. They are the single biggest online entity in sheer dollar volume with millions of customers. Yet they still try to keep the community the focus. I think that's prevalent even with all of the creeping changes. eBay doesn't want to alienate its own clientelle. That's a noble effort, even with all of the glitches that surround giganticness.

I suspect eBay will treat Cragslist clientelle in the same fashion - community first. Yet, they will be able to bring more recognition (and cities) with their marketing might and R&D dollars.

btw: For a Really Great Look into eBay's origins and culture, check out the book "eBoys" about the early days of eBay and Benchmark Capital, its VC backers.

--
carbolic
www.wifi-toys.com

I don't know about this...

[nlawalker]

I hope Craigslist maintains its grassroots look and feel (doubtful), as well as customers. You can find more free crap on Craigslist than anywhere else I've ever seen. It's become a new hobby for our fraternity; a guy upstairs managed to get a three piece connected leather lounger with built in telephone and massager for free. We tried to hook up the school bus one guy offered but it didn't go through. Fishtanks, computer stuff... you can find anything on there.

FUCK NO PLEASE!!!!!

[greymond]

"Like craigslist, eBay is about helping folks get everyday stuff done, on a level playing field - they emphasize trustworthiness and reputation, and try really hard to listen to people. Basically, we're both about building community, and humanizing and democratizing the 'net, and there's gotta be more of that."

This is utter Bullshit. First off Craigslist has many sections a good portion of which are adult related (see the Erotic Section). In addition Craigslist also supports anonymous posting and emailing as well as a Rant and Rave section that is 100% uncensorsed by anyone other than the viewers of Craigslist. meaning that unless enough people "flag" a posting it can not be removed. Craigslist does not have intrusive ads, in fact most of their sections don't have any ads.

Ebay on the other hand and especially their payment company Paypal is totally for censuring adult related material and the language of it's auctions. Both things that Craigslist would never intrude upon. And I shouldn't even have to mention how many ads Ebay and Paypal have/use.

I for one hope someone else starts a Craigslist ripoff that continues a truly free and adless site.

Re:Minority Stake?

[GregChant]

Craig owns 75%, so he has all the say. If eBay does not like this, they can request an election. Oh ya, they'll lose since Craig owns a 75% stake of the company.

While in theory, you are correct, but in practice, this becomes financial suicide. You forgot to include the comedy second option: if eBay doesn't like Craig's decisions, they can pull out: potentially hurting the value of craigslist in future trading.

The real power is in the purse, not in the votes.

Re:eBay you say?

[NutscrapeSucks]

Try putting the name of the item in -- it helps.