August 13, 2004
There goes craigslist

For those unfamiliar with it, craigslist is a quirky, eclectic and fantastic online community for well, just about anything. I was recently happy to discover they now have a Hartford edition (although it is rather slow in growth.. unless you count the casual encounters section.. but that's a whole other animal) and was looking forward to the Hartford classified section growing in volume. It seems that today Ebay bought a 25% stake in craigslist. What will that mean? I think we can say goodbye to the largely uncensored, quirky community and welcome Yet Another Boring Classifieds Site.

I can hear the accountants and lawyers gnashing their teeth on new posting rules already. How sad.

Craig's post about it.

Posted August 13, 2004 04:22 PM in Random
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Comments
On August 13, 2004 05:45 PM Craig Newmark added:

hey, how about giving us a break?

we put a lot of energy into preventing the kind of change you're referring to.

please help me out, take a look at my blog, cnewmark.com.

thanks!

Craig

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On August 13, 2004 06:00 PM kasia added:

I've no doubt you do, Craig, but big corporations are very difficult to fight..

I do hope I'm wrong! Best of luck.

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On August 13, 2004 06:10 PM Travis added:

Yeah, I still worry. They're hoping to keep the same spirit (I read what Craig wrote on his blog), but I just sold something for the first time on Craigs list ( http://ziphstric.com/blog/archives/2004/08/01/selling-it-with-craig/ ) and it wasn't just the spirit that Craig , it was the *simplicity of mechanism* (and no issues about whether some browsers work and others don't that sometimes comes up with EBay). The way I'm reading it, Craig's might get fancier and thus lose some of its coolness. Or maybe not. I hope I'm wrong, but I apparently have some similar thoughts to Kasia about how big enterprises tend to affect the things they touch significantly even when they indicate no interest in instituting substantial change.

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On August 13, 2004 10:09 PM Gregory Blake added:

I hope it doesn't get tweaked too much, or at all. Though, craigslist Hartford has to be one of the lamest parts of craigslist that I've ever seen.

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