Is It Still Craig's List?

By: Lucas ConleyWed Dec 19, 2007 at 7:44 AM

When you're a small, spirited startup built on community, personal attention, and customer service, attracting the investment of one of the world's largest dotcoms can be daunting. Craig's List's leaders had the courage to collaborate with eBay, and early reports indicate that the company will remain grounded -- while still having more room to grow.

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Buckmaster: Um, I don't think commercial interests were a driving force. One of the things we liked about them is that they're very community driven themselves. Craig's List resonated deeply with them. Our desire to stick to our mission and philosophy was one of the things we discussed early on; they wanted to know what the core values were at Craig's List. In their minds, those were sacred cows. I wouldn't be surprised if you saw some linking between the sites somewhere down the road, but no specific plans.

Newmark: [eBay] likes the way we do things. The news is really that there is no news. I just tell people that there's no change. We hope we'll be able to handle abuse cases better, but that's about it. I like the way they track user reputation -- if you're looking for a better dry cleaner, the way to find that is to ask around and go by reputation. We've been thinking about adding something like this for years, but we've never had a chance to do anything about it. You listen, you talk to people. Who knows? We'll see. We have no idea what we'd do, if ever. I do think the idea in general is important, but it won't be soon. Right now I've got a personal interest in getting Anchorage going.

FC: Depending on one's perspective, your situation with eBay could be seen as a blessing or a curse. What do you say to someone at another small company who may have a similar opportunity?

Buckmaster: One lesson would be to focus on what's most important to your users and spend the majority of your efforts in focusing on making sure that those important values are preserved in whatever relationships or deals you're contemplating. It's been the Craig's List credo since early on that we're here to provide a public service to our users and that wasn't something that was going to be up for negotiation with anyone. And we were approached by a lot of other entities -- certainly eBay stood out from the crowd by understanding intuitively what's important to our users. They seemed to recognize our mission and philosophy, whereas other entities might not have understood that.

FC: Others approached you for the same stake that eBay eventually acquired?

Buckmaster: Right.

FC: When you made the announcement, what kind of response did you get from the public?

Buckmaster: It was wide-ranging. The majority of our users understand that our mission and philosophy hasn't changed in nine years. It wasn't likely that a minority shareholder was going to lead to noticeable changes in the way we do things. People less familiar with us looked at this with a healthy degree of skepticism.

FC: Were some people excited?

Buckmaster: Quite a few. Of course, it's those who are worried that you're most likely to hear from, but we did get a few folks chiming in to say that this was a positive development.

FC: Did they make any suggestions?

Buckmaster: They were eagerly anticipating our wholesale reform to the eBay site. (Laughter) No, they didn't have any specific ideas. I think some people understood that what this really represents is an upgrade. That we'd found a good home for these shares, and we might even obtain a substantial positive outcome for the Craig's List community. For those less familiar with us, it's only the passage of time that will show that the way we do things won't change. And we think that will lead to a lot of, um, what's the phrase I want? Pleasant surprises. Watch this space.

FC: Craig, you mentioned launching Anchorage. When you launch a new community, what goes into that?

Newmark: A little tech work, but mostly word of mouth. The press has been pretty kind to us, and we appreciate that, but generally it's just word of mouth. Mostly spontaneous, people just tell their friends. We should probably be more professional about it, but it works.

Buckmaster: Adding more cities like Anchorage and making the site as widely available as people will have us is our focus. We get lots of requests for Craig's List in new cities -- including cities where English is not the spoken language -- so we're trying to gear up for some Craig's List sites in other languages. That would be a significant tech project for us. Another one would be making our service available to folks in more rural areas, away from major cities. And then we want to add whatever features people would like to have. We need to improve our search capabilities. Lots of things that essentially amount to feature enhancements.

FC: Any specific foreign-language cities?

From Issue 86 | September 2004

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Recent Comments | 47 Total

July 16, 2009 at 3:13am by Smith William

We do a lot with a little. And remember, it's a relatively small investment from their standpoint. It's not as though they're counting on us for their future financial performance.
online Bachelors degree | online Computer Science degree | ME degree

Is It Still Craig's List?

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