List of all international craigslist.org online classifieds sites.
Craig Newmark began the service in 1995 as an email distribution list to friends, featuring local events in the
San Francisco Bay Area, before becoming a web-based service in 1996 and expanding into other classified categories. It started expanding to other U.S. cities in 2000, and currently covers 50 countries.
In March 2008, Spanish, French, Italian, German, and
Portuguese became the first non-English languages supported.
[3] As of August 9, 2012, over 700 "cities" in 70 countries have Craigslist sites.
[4] Some Craigslist sites cover large regions instead of individual metropolitan areas—for example, the U.S. states of
Delaware and
Wyoming, the
Colorado Western Slope, the
California Gold Country, and the
Upper Peninsula of Michigan are among the locations with their own Craigslist sites.
[5]
History
Having observed people helping one another in friendly, social, and trusting communal ways on the Internet via the
WELL,
MindVox and
Usenet, and feeling isolated as a relative newcomer to San Francisco, Craigslist founder
Craig Newmarkdecided to create something similar for local events.
[6][7] In early 1995, he began an email distribution list to friends. Most of the early postings were submitted by Newmark and were notices of social events of interest to software and Internet developers living and working in the
San Francisco Bay Area.
Soon,
word of mouth led to rapid growth. The number of subscribers and postings grew rapidly. There was no moderation and Newmark was surprised when people started using the mailing list for non-event postings.
[citation needed] People trying to get technical positions filled found that the list was a good way to reach people with the skills they were looking for. This led to the addition of a category for "jobs". User demand for more categories caused the list of categories to grow. The initial technology encountered some limits, so by
June 1995 majordomo had been installed and the mailing list "Craigslist" resumed operations. Community members started asking for a web interface. Craig registered "craigslist.org", and the website went live in 1996.
By early 1998, Newmark still thought his career was as a software engineer ("hardcore java programmer") and that Craigslist was a cool hobby that was getting him invited to the best parties for geeks and nerds.
[citation needed] In the fall of 1998, the name "List Foundation" was introduced and Craigslist started transitioning to the use of this name. In
April 1999, when Newmark learned of other organizations called "List Foundation", the use of this name was dropped. Craigslist incorporated as a private for-profit company in 1999.
[6] Around the time of these events, Newmark realized that the site was growing so fast that he could stop working as a software engineer and work full-time running Craigslist. By
April 2000, there were nine employees working out of Newmark's apartment in San Francisco.
[8]
In January 2000, current CEO
Jim Buckmaster joined the company as lead programmer and
CTO. Buckmaster contributed the site's multi-city architecture, search engine, discussion forums, flagging system, self-posting process, homepage design, personals categories, and best-of-Craigslist feature. He was promoted to CEO in
November 2000.
[9]
The web site expanded into nine more U.S. cities in 2000, four in 2001 and 2002 each, and 14 in 2003. On August 1, 2004, Craigslist began charging $25 to post job openings on the New York and Los Angeles pages. On the same day, a new section called "Gigs" was added, where low-cost and unpaid jobs and internships can be posted free.
Operations
The site serves over 20 billion page views per month, putting it in 37th place overall among web sites worldwide and 10th place overall among web sites in the United States (per
Alexa.com on
March 24, 2011), with over
49.4 million unique monthly visitors in the United States alone (per
Compete.com on
January 8, 2010). With over
80 million new classified advertisements each month, Craigslist is the leading classifieds service in any medium. The site receives over
2 million new job listings each month, making it one of the top job boards in the world.
[10][11] The 23 largest U.S. cities listed on the Craigslist home page collectively receive more than 300,000 postings per day just in the "for sale" and "housing" sections as of October 2011.
[12]The classified advertisements range from traditional buy/sell ads and community announcements to
personal ads.
In 2009, Craigslist operated with a staff of 28 people.
[13]
Financials and ownership
In December 2006, at the
UBS Global Media Conference in New York, Craigslist CEO
Jim Buckmaster told
Wall Street analysts that Craigslist has little interest in maximizing profit, instead it prefers to help users find cars, apartments, jobs, and dates.
[14][15]
Craigslist's main source of revenue is paid job ads in select cities—$75 per ad for the San Francisco Bay Area; $25 per ad for New York City, Los Angeles, San Diego, Boston, Seattle, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Philadelphia, Orange County (California) and Portland, Oregon—and paid broker apartment listings in New York City ($10 per ad).
The company does not formally disclose financial or ownership information. Analysts and commentators have reported varying figures for its annual revenue, ranging from $10 million in 2004, $20 million in 2005, and
$25 million in 2006 to possibly
$150 million in 2007.
[16][17][18]
On August 13, 2004, Newmark announced on his blog that auction giant
eBay had purchased a 25% stake in the company from a former employee.
[19] Some fans of Craigslist expressed concern that this development would affect the site's longtime non-commercial nature. As of April 2012, there have been no substantive changes to the usefulness or non-advertising nature of the site—no banner ads, charges for a few services provided to businesses.
The company is believed to be owned principally by Newmark, Buckmaster, and
eBay (the three board members). eBay owns approximately 25%, and Newmark is believed to own the largest stake.
[5][18][20]
In April 2008,
eBay announced that it was suing Craigslist to "safeguard its four-year financial investment". eBay claimed in
January 2008 that Craigslist executives took actions that "unfairly diluted eBay's economic interest by more than 10%".
[21] In response, Craigslist filed a counter-suit against eBay in
May 2008 to "remedy the substantial and ongoing harm to fair competition" that Craigslist claims is constituted by eBay's actions as Craigslist shareholders.
[22]
Content policies
As of 2012,
mashup sites such as padmapper.com and housingmaps.com were overlaying Craigslist data with
Google Mapsand adding their own search filters to improve usability. In June 2012, Craigslist changed its terms of service to disallow the practice. In July 2012, Craigslist filed a lawsuit against padmapper.com.
[23]
Site characteristics
Personals
Over the years Craigslist has become a very popular online destination for arranging for
dates, and
sex.
[24][25][26][27][28]The personals section allows for postings that are for "strictly platonic", "dating/romance", and "casual encounters".
[24][25][27][28]
The site has been found to be particularly appealing to help connect lesbians, and gay men with one another because of its free and open nature in addition to it being hard to find gay people in one's area for some.
[29]
In 2005, San Francisco Craigslist's
men seeking men section was attributed to facilitating sexual encounters and was the second most common correlation to
syphilis infections.
[29] The company has been pressured by San Francisco Department of Public Health officials, leading Jim Buckmaster to state that the site has a very small staff and that the public must police themselves.
[29] They have however added links to
San Francisco City Clinic and
STD forums.
[29]
Adult services controversy
Craigslist website as it appeared on September 4, 2010, with black censored box in place of
Adult Services
Advertisements for "adult" (previously "erotic") services were initially given special treatment, then closed entirely on
September 4, 2010, following a controversy over claims by state attorneys general that the advertisements promoted prostitution.
[30][31]
In 2002, a disclaimer was put on the "men seeking men", "casual encounters", "erotic services", and "rants and raves" boards to ensure that those who clicked on these sections were over the age of 18, but no disclaimer was put on the "men seeking women", "women seeking men" or "women seeking women" boards. As a response to charges of discrimination and negative
stereotyping, Buckmaster explained that the company's policy is a response to user feedback requesting the warning on the more sexually explicit sections, including "men seeking men".
[32]Today, all of the above listed boards (as well as some others) have a disclaimer.
On May 13, 2009, Craigslist announced that it would close the
erotic services section, replacing it with an
adult servicessection to be reviewed by Craigslist employees. This decision came after allegations by several U.S. states that the erotic services ads were being used for prostitution.
[33] Postings to the new category cost $10 and could be renewed for $5.
On September 4, 2010, Craigslist closed the adult services section of its website in the United States. The site initially replaced the adult services page link with the word "censored" in white-on-black text. The site received criticism and complaints from attorneys general that the section's ads were facilitating prostitution and child sex trafficking.
[34][35]
The adult services section link was still active in countries outside of the U.S.
[36] Matt Zimmerman, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said, "Craigslist isn't legally culpable for these posts, but the public pressure has increased and Craigslist is a small company." Brian Carver, attorney and assistant professor at UC Berkeley, said that legal threats could have a chilling effect on online expression. "If you impose liability on Craigslist, YouTube and Facebook for anything their users do, then they're not going to take chances. It would likely result in the takedown of what might otherwise be perfectly legitimate free expression."
[37]
On
September 8, 2010, the "censored" label and its dead link to adult services were completely removed.
[38][39]
Craigslist announced on September 15, 2010, that it had closed its adult services in the United States for good. However, it defended its right to carry such ads and its efforts to fight prostitution and sex trafficking. Free speech and some sex crime victim advocates criticized the removal of the section, saying that it threatened free speech and that it diminished law enforcement's ability to track criminals. However, the removal was applauded by many state attorneys general and some other groups fighting sex crimes. Craigslist said that there is some indication that those who posted ads in the adult services section are posting elsewhere. Sex ads cost $10 initially and it was estimated they would have brought in $44 million in 2010 had they continued.
[40][41] In the four months following the closure, monthly revenue from sex ads on six other sites (primarily
Backpage) increased from $2.1 to $3.1 million, partly due to price increases.
[42]
On
December 19, 2010, after pressure from Ottawa and several provinces, Craigslist closed 'Erotic Services' and 'Adult Gigs' from its Canadian website, even though prostitution is
not itself illegal in Canada.
[43]
Flagging
Craigslist has a user flagging system to quickly identify illegal and inappropriate postings. Users may flag postings they believe to be in violation of Craigslist guidelines. Flagging does not require account login or registration and can be made anonymously by anyone.
[44] Ads sufficiently flagged are subject to automated removal when a certain number of users flag a posting. The number of flaggings required for a posting's removal is variable and remains unknown to all but craigslist.org.
[44] Items are flagged for three categories: miscategorized, prohibited, or spam/overpost.
[45] Users are given a short description of each category.
[46] Flagging also occurs as acts of vandalism by groups of individuals at different ISPs to trigger the automated removal process of postings.
[44]
Bartering
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