What’s so special about craigslist?
January 24th, 2006
0 votes
I just don’t get it. I can’t figure out why people love craigslist. They obviously do. It’s one of the most popular sites on the web. I understand that it’s unique in its simplicity. I see that it helps connect people in a Web 2.0 kind of way. I’ve known about craigslist for years and visited the site many times but I just don’t ever get past the main page or two.
Am I the only one? Craig Newmark is going to be on StartupNation Radio this weekend to give us all his great insight into how to create community on the web and build a popular website seemingly without trying too hard. This I gotta hear.
Are you a craigslist user? What am I missing?
January 24th, 2006 at 11:18 am
ah, maybe it has to do with the culture of trust we have, and a genuine emphasis on community?
who knows?
Craig
January 24th, 2006 at 2:13 pm
i believe it has to do with the building momentum toward consumer choice. if you notice, consumers are flocking to services that offer them more control. services such as tivo, which give the consumer more control over when to watch programming are increasingly popular. yesterday i saw a surf apparel company offering their customers an opportunity to design their own boardshort.
craigslist allows people to control the process, and their popularity is surging for just that reason. other reasons as well, like craig mentioned (it’s an honor by the way), the sense of community, but that sense is born out of a personal stake in that community.
i see this trend exploding outward over the next decade.
January 24th, 2006 at 2:15 pm
I live in San Francisco, the center of the Craigslist (CL) storm. It seems like there are two important ingredients to the CL success story. First there is the community. This is definitely what makes it interesting. I haven’t seen it yet, but there’s already a documentary called "24 Hours on Craigslist" that captures some of the unique personalities that make up the users.
A critically important second ingredient is the mostly non-commercial aspect of the site. I’m not just talking about free to register, free to use but ad supported. I mean totally free (except for job postings). It’s so totally refreshing to use a site that doesn’t have a single paid advertisement on it. Google was news for a while because they didn’t post any ads on their homepage and analysts worried about the squandered opportunity. The clean homepage is an important reason I still use Google even though the other search engines are catching up with results relevance. Now take that clean ad-free aesthetic and apply it to the entire site!
I think the ad-free framework is a big part of what keeps the community together (to the degree one could call it ‘together’). If CL started charging subscription fees or showing keyword related ads, I think it would just be another social site and loose much of its luster.
January 24th, 2006 at 9:30 pm
I love Craigslist and have used it from everything from networking for potential partners to finding the best hot spots to eat in a particular city to finding people who are into some of the things that I am. There seems to be no end to what you can do on Craigslist and the fact that it is regional gives it more value.
January 26th, 2006 at 12:16 pm
I’m afraid I’m with SN on this topic. yawn.