Why has craigslist succeeded when similar business ventures have failed?
One thing that people often don’t get about us: We’re a public service first. Most businesses are conceived as a way of making money. Our primary mindset is philanthropic — to offer what we see as a public service. On our site you don’t see banner adds, text ads, cookies, co-marketing agreements, selling user information to third parties — all of those nuisances users encounter on majority of sites. We put up the sites and people use them or don’t. The way we make decisions is a function of the user feedback we get. Q: You mean you guys aren’t in this at all for the money? A: Basically, and that’s the ironic part. Throughout the boom time running through the late 1990s into 2000, a lot of people thought we were fools for not cashing in and going public like everyone else. Now 95% or more of those companies are gone, and we’ve been in the black, since 1999 anyway. Q: How will your company change now that eBay is a minority stakeholder? A: Users who have known us over time are fairly c
