OPW — We’re at the Webmaster World Conference a.k.a Pub Con in Vegas listening to Craig Newmark, Founder of Craigslist. This is the live-blog of his keynote.
Craig started Craigslist as a cc list for events. Not long after starting it he thought about calling it SFevents but was persuaded to keep his name as Craigslist because it was personal and quirky. He hasn’t done any coding since 1999. He does customer service for Craigslist now (mainly handling abuse cases), because it feels right to do that. In 1997 the site hit a million page views a month and he was approached about running banner ads. He decided against them because ‘it didn’t feel right’ and ‘sometimes you have to go with what feels right.’ The ads would slow down the site, and Craig was an overpaid programmer and didn’t need the money.
In 1998 Craigslist started charging for job postings and running Craigslist as a volunteer organization. In 1999 he turned Craigslist into a business. Running it with volunteers did not work out. ‘The suckage was considerable’ so he hired Jim Buckmaster to be CEO.
In 2000 more cities were added. New York was one of them. ‘We make things up as we go along. Our business model has evolved, really, not at all.’ The community said it was ok to post for job postings (currently Craigslist charges in 11 cities) and charge for apartment listings in New York City.
‘Many people don’t believe I exist, and I encourage people to disbelieve.’ Craigslist is closing in on 9 billion page views a month and runs on LAMP and on an email system called PINE. Somebody once said Craigslist has the visual appeal of a pipe wrench. ‘We charge for less than 1% of the site, and we’ve just been doing what feels right and running it on some idea of shared values. …People just believe they should give each other a break now and then.’ If you trust your community they will respond in a trustworthy way. Craig can be reached at craig@craigslist.org.
We’ll be live-blogging several sessions of use to internet dating affiliates and marketing managers over at Frequent Flirters.
PRESS RELEASE — Dec 4 — iovation, the device reputation authority for the Internet, has been awarded a patent by the U.S. Patent and TrademarkOffice (USPTO) entitled Network Security and Fraud Detection System and Method, U.S. Patent No. 7,272,728. iovation manages the reputation of millions of Internet-enabled devices worldwide, allowing its customers to control online fraud and abuse while benefiting from sharing device reputation intelligence. 
