Craigslist Seattle History and Detail

Craigslist (stylized as craigslist) is a classified ads website in the United States with sections for employment, housing, sale, desired items, services, community service, gigs, résumés, and discussion forums.

History

Craig Newmark founded the service in 1995 as a friend-to-friend email distribution list for San Francisco Bay Area events. It switched to a web-based service in 1996 and expanded into additional categorized categories. It began expanding to other cities in the United States and Canada in 2000, and it now serves 70 nations.

Craigslist inventor Craig Newmark decided to build something comparable for local events after observing people supporting one another in friendly, social, and trusting communal ways on the Internet via the WELL, MindVox, and Usenet, and feeling alone as a relative newcomer to San Francisco. He started an email distribution list for pals in early 1995. Newmark provided most early postings, which were notifications about social events of interest to software and Internet developers in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Word of mouth quickly spread, resulting in fast expansion. The number of members and postings rose at a rapid rate. There was no moderation, and Newmark was taken aback when people began utilizing the mailing list for purposes other than event announcements. Candidates looking for technical positions realized that using Craigslist was an efficient way to identify people with the necessary skills. As a result, a new employment category was created. The number of types has increased in response to user demand for new categories. Majordomo had been implemented by June 1995, and the mailing list “Craigslist” had resumed operations, as the prior technology had reached its limits. Members of the community began to want an online interface. “craigslist” was registered by Newmark.

Operations

With more than 49.4 million unique monthly visitors in the United States alone, the site offers more than 20 billion[12] page views each month, putting it in 72nd rank overall. Craigslist is the most popular classifieds service globally, with over 80 million new classified ads added each month.

The site produces approximately 2 million new job listings monthly, making it one of the most prominent job websites in the world.

As of October 2011, the 23 largest U.S. cities listed on Craigslist’s home page received over 300,000 listings each day in the “for sale” and “housing” sections alone. Traditional buy/sell ads, community notices, and personal ads are all included in the classified ads.

Financials 

Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster told Wall Street analysts at the UBS Global Media Conference in New York in December 2006 that the company was less interested in making a profit and instead preferred to help users find jobs, cars, and apartments.

Paid job advertisements in select American cities are Craigslist’s principal source of revenue. The company does not formally disclose financial or ownership information. Analysts and journalists have claimed a range of annual revenue numbers for the company, ranging from $10 million in 2004, $20 million in 2005, $25 million in 2006, and even $150 million in 2007.

In April 2008, eBay announced that it was suing Craigslist to “defend its four-year economic investment.” According to eBay, Craigslist officials allegedly “unfairly diluted eBay’s economic stake by more than 10%” in January 2008. In May 2008, Craigslist filed a counter-suit to “remedy the substantial and ongoing harm to fair competition” caused by eBay’s actions as Craigslist shareholders; the company claimed that eBay allegedly utilized its minority ownership to acquire access to confidential information, which is subsequently used in its competitor site Kijiji, according to the business.

On June 19, 2015, eBay Inc. announced that it would sell its stake in Craigslist for an undisclosed price and ending its legal struggle with the firm. The decision came as eBay planned to split off PayPal and divest other companies to concentrate on its core business.

Jameslist.com, a Swedish luxury marketplace website, was served with a lawsuit on July 11, 2012, seeking undisclosed damages and the complete suspension of Jameslist.com. As a result, the little company was compelled to alter its name to James Edition.

Policy on Content

To improve usability, mashup sites like padmapper.com and housingmaps.com overlay Craigslist data with Google Maps and add their search filters as of 2012. Craigslist’s terms of service were amended in June 2012 to prevent the practice. Craigslist sued Padmapper.com in July 2012. Following the closing of Padmapper.com, some users expressed their dissatisfaction, claiming that the service was valuable to them and so should have been preserved.

Features of the Site

Craigslist has grown in popularity as a site for arranging dates and sex over the years. Postings for “strictly platonic,” “dating/romance,” and “casual encounters” are permitted in the personals area.

Because of the service’s free and open character, as well as the difficulties of finding each other in more conservative locations, lesbians and homosexual men seeking connections find the site particularly useful.

In 2005, the men searching men section of San Francisco Craigslist was accused of promoting sexual interactions and was the second most prevalent link to syphilis infections. San Francisco Department of Public Health officials has put pressure on the corporation, causing Jim Buckmaster to claim that the site has minimal staff and the public. In reaction to the passage of the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA), which removes Section 230 safe harbors for interactive services knowingly engaging in unlawful sex trafficking, Craigslist removed its “Personals” section in the United States on March 22, 2018.