Craigslist to Start Charging for Some Listings

rufey writes "In the coming months, Craigslist will begin charging fees for some of its listings. New York City real estate listings will be the first to get the fees. Starting on March 1st, it will cost $10 to list real estate on Craigslist for New York City. The fees may not be limited to New York real estate however. Job postings may see fees imposed for various parts of the country. The fees have been proposed as a way to combat the problem of people posting the same thing several times a day to keep their listing near the top of the list."

Comments

craigSlist

[Anonymous Coward]

make sure you do not omit the "s" in craigslist.

otherwise it takes you to a page with porn ads.

Meta-Moderation?

[bigwang]

I love craigslist.
But wouldn't it be effective if people could flag the types of posts that these measures are trying to curb?
"Flag this message 'dickwad'"

Re:Meta-Moderation?

[MustardMan]

IMHO the flag system on craigslist is severly flawed, though - the messages pretty much vanish, and a user who saw a listing one day has no idea why it's gone the next day. Plus, there are entire communities of self-righteous jackasses who patrol craigslist and flag en masse any post that they don't like. I see this a LOT in the pets classifieds, where some have assigned themselves the pet police and go around removing any posts that offend their (usually quite extreme) sensitivities.

Editors?

[Catskul]

Can we charge Slashdot editors to post stories... It might have the same benefitial effects !

i hear a sucking sound...

[d723]

Tim Redmond of the San Francisco Bay Guardian has an interesting perspective on Craigslist:

A little background. Mr. Newmark, whom everyone calls "Craig," has created a system of online advertising that has pretty much wiped out traditional daily newspaper classified ads in many of the 115 US markets where he now operates. He's also hurt the alternative press, although the damage to the dailies is deeper. Some say Craig has single-handedly destroyed thousands of newspaper jobs.

He calls Craigslist the Walmart of classified ads because it siphons money out of the local economy since Craigslist doesn't employ people locally in the markets in which it operates.

It also seems that one of the reasons Craigslist became the definitive source for online classifieds is because it's FREE for everything except job postings, and job postings is an area where they are not the definitive source. Their product is not incredibly complex. If/when they start to charge, it would be a relatively easy task for someone to build a better free alternative.

their plan all along

[opencity]

Like the text ads and adsense on Google I would assume this was Craig's plan all along. Newspaper classifieds are going the way of the horse and buggy anyway. As soon as the routing, billing and favored content issues are sorted out we'll start to see the end of free email. A penny a message eliminates spam but doesn't slow me down.

OT somewhat: To me, the internet has so far destroyed more 'wealth' than it created. What was once the music business is losing the 'business' part (probably going to improve the music). Corporations that were worth $ because of song ownership / publishing catalogs are now involved in a market driven con game to claim they're still worth anything at all. Magazines that used to employ writers, designers, editors, mail room clerks are watching their industry go away, and some covering their own demise. The writers end up blogging where Googles current ad-revenue illusion can make them a couple of $$ a day. When the fraudulent aspect of click throughs becomes more evident, that revenue stream will ride off into the sunset.