Craigslist for all mankind.

Newly Ancient (a web idol of mine) posted recently about a WIRED article concerned with Craigslist. I tried to comment over there but it seems the form is not working properly.

Here’s Morgante’s original post:

Wired has published an in-depth article about Craigslist that exposes the peculiar personality of the site, and its founder. I have never been a fan of Craigslist — its usability is terrible. The Craiglist management has a somewhat hypocritical stance. Supposedly, the site is simple because business growth isn’t a priority; it’s all about the users. Yet those same users (or potential ones) complain about how backwards the site is, with extremely poor technology running it. Worst yet, Craigslist actively discourages innovation by not offering any kind of API to external clients. Hopefully, just as newspaper classifieds were defeated by newer media, Craiglist will eventually fall to companies willing to innovate.

Here’s what I wanted to say:

I gotta disagree. In the current state of our economy I think it’s great that a little company with lots of users and specific ideals doesn’t just want to squeeze it’s users for money.

The draw of CL is that it’s free and it’s owners consider it a public/community asset, not an ATM for planes and cars and houses. Instead of innovating their focusing on providing consistent, quality service (so what if the site looks dumpy, I’ve found and sold many a material good, roommate, apartment–and the same can be said for any level of user).

I don’t think another company will come and knock CL off, and I think that’s a positive. Newmark will go down as one of the most influential web-men of the 20th and 21st centuries because of these little quirks that people misconstrue as weaknesses. I think it’s great that he is content with what he’s created and applies his waking hours to help it grow, interact with it’s users and, in his opinion, make the world a better place.

It flies in the face of conventional business thinking, that’s for sure.  But the CL mantra and way of doing business, perhaps, is an important lesson in this day and age of government bailouts.