Craigslist ignores its potential

Curious about Craigslist’s success? Then check out this podcast that founder Craig Newmark did with David Weinberger. Quote of the podcast from Newmark: “Everything on the site is based on user feedback. Frankly, I have no vision whatsoever.” At the mesh conference last week, Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster dropped a few mind-blowing facts:

1. The site is serving up seven billion pageviews a month from 200 servers
2. All 24 employees work at a Victorian house in San Francisco
3. The company has never had a tech quit in 12 years
4. Craigslist never holds meetings.

Jim Buckmaster, Craigslist Inc.'s six-foot-seven chief executive officer, has come a long way from his days of making tofu in a commune, marching in antiwar protests clad in socks and Teva sandals and, for nine months in the early 1990s, living homeless — or as he says, "without a set address." The former hippie from Ann Arbor, Mich., says he's even come to accept that capitalism is the best way to "organize societal resources" to provide the masses with a decent living.

The company's unwillingness to charge for most of its listings is infuriating for newspaper publishers who see classifieds moving on-line and recognize that as long as Craigslist is giving away the service for free, they will have a hard time charging for it.

Mr. Buckmaster admits that Craigslist has lucked into a healthy business "kind of without trying." And indeed, the company's success has baffled some observers. Its user interface is considered boring by 2007 standards. Its brand name is pedestrian compared with the Googles and Yahoos of the world. And while the other Web giants all employ tens of thousands of people, Craigslist has only 24 employees, including Mr. Newmark and Mr. Buckmaster.

He acknowledges that his and Mr. Newmark's personal politics probably play a role in the unconventional way the company has developed. They are left-leaning libertarians, Mr. Newmark says, not communists as they have been labelled from time to time. He says the company's modus operandi — to serve its users without taking more from them than necessary to operate the business — makes more sense than the traditional business model of maximizing quarterly profit by trying to squeeze every possibly penny out of one's customers.

But observers say Craigslist's estimated annual revenue of $25-million (U.S.) is only about 5 per cent of what it would be if Craigslist put a little effort into what corporate strategy types refer to as monetization.

By the numbers

• 450: The number of cities worldwide for which Craigslist offers local classifieds and forums
• 8 billion: The number of page views Craigslist generates each month
• 10 million: The number of new images that are uploaded to Craigslist each month
• 25 million: The number of people who use Craigslist each month
• 20 million: The number of classified ads that Craigslist users self-publish each month
• 1 million: The number of job listings the site receives each month
• $25: The amount in U.S. dollars that Craigslist charges for jobs ads for New York, Los Angeles, Washington, Boston, Seattle and San Diego. It charges $75 in San Francisco.
• 24: The number of Craigslist employees