WSJ on CraigsList and Zen of Classified Ads

prostoalex writes "Wall Street Journal profiles one of the Valley's most mysterious and secretive Web companies. A leader in online classifieds space and by some measures one of Web's top sites, CraigsList is ostensibly anti-ad and anti-self-promotion. From the article: "One industry analyst has estimated that Craigslist could generate 20 times that $25 million just by posting a couple of ads on each of its pages. If the estimate is to be believed, that's half a billion dollars a year being left on the table. What kind of company turns up its nose at $500 million?""

Comments

The kind of company..

[mr_stinky_britches]

that isn't driven to make all the money possible as soon as possible. Part of the reason CraigsList is so popular and people appreciate/use it so much is because they aren't a bunch of sell outs who will spam you with ads at every possible opportunity.

Also, sometimes when running a business, the best place to be is not necessarily the "biggest" and/or "most visible" place to be. Not every company dreams of or wishes to aspire to growing into some kind of huge behemoth like Wal-Mart.
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http://wi-fizzle.com

Re:I Had No Idea

[mythosaz]

Sex and drugs are part of the answer to the parent question in the article. When the buy.com 10% off orders over $100 ads hit the site, they're going to be obligated to remove sections like "Services, Erotic", "Rants and Raves" and "Casual Encounters" -- or at least begin policing them by means other than community flagging. Yes, "Casual Encounters" is 100 men begging for sex, 1 woman laughing, and 200 bots posting single-picture links to "hotcamgirlzmilfsecks dot com" -- but that doesn't make the content any less objectionable to advertisers. In the evenings, in my town, there's an ad a minute posted in "Services, Erotic" for escorts and call-girls -- most of them legitimate (or, as legitimate as a hooker can be). ...great place to find someone giving away a washer and dryer though.

Fascinating.

[MrAnnoyanceToYou]

I'm all starry eyed about this guy all of a sudden. I mean, a true public servant nerd. His very existence totally undermines some of the basic tenets of capitalism. Of course, he could just cash in so fast it's amazing. But he doesn't, for some reason. And they send this guy from the 'money news source' and he manages to impress him. Not to be stared at like some kind of crazy, but to impress him and then take him back to his hotel. I mean, it's not like Craig's List is that impressive- you could rebuild it in a month (week? Three day codefest?) with the right developers. So customer service is key.... And that's what he provides. I'm bowled over.

I love the 'give us the money instead' comment, though. I've always wondered if there would ever be a way for an Internet company to farm big corporations for real people.... At first, I thought that that was what Google ad revenue was doing.

Re:Hey! We were gonna milk that for all its worth!

[DragonWriter]

And in fact they pretty much don't exist. Craigslist was founded by one guy, Craig Newmark, entirely with his own money. He still owns most of the company, except for one small chunk that he gave away, and that later was sold to eBay.

Sole? Sole proprietorships and very narrowly, privately held corporations, partnerships, etc. make up a large percentage of businesses, and many of them operate in accord with interests of their owners beyond simply maximizing financial return or market value of the business.

Widely, publicly held companies whose management's sole duty is to maximize the financial return to the owners may make up most really big businesses, but they certainly aren't most businesses.