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The History of Craigslist
Ever wonder how it all started? How could a simple idea explode into the giant classified ad marketplace leader that Craigslist is today? The history of Craigslist is a great tale, and worth a mention on this site. If nothing else, it can serve as a motivation piece for your next project knowing that it doesn’t need to take millions of corporate dollars to create something that millions of people love. Let’s dive in…
The Man Himself- Craig Newmark
Craig Newmark was born in 1952 in Morristown, New Jersey. He went to work as a programmer for IBM for the following 17 years before moving to the San Francisco Bay Area to work for Charles Schwab in 1993. Craig was new to the city and didn’t know many people; so while working at Charles Schwab in 1995, Craig formed a small email list to share information about future events and other occurrences in San Francisco with the few friends he had. Though he had other names planned for his email list, he was encouraged to call it “Craigslist” to keep it personal.
The “list” begins to grow
As Craig’s List started to be sent out around the city, more and more people kept writing to him asking to be placed as a Carbon Copy (CC) on the list. In an interview with Inc. Magazine, Craig stated that “At first, the email was just arts and technology events,”. But as more people joined the list, the more suggestions he got about how to improve the list. Soon people were asking to add listings for items people were selling, then came requests for apartments for rent. Within a short amount of time, the concept of an email list was simply no longer viable.
The launch of Craigslist
Craig began creating a website to hold all of the event announcements, job advertising, apartment listings, and “for sale” listings. Craigslist.org was launched in 1996. Of course, website templates were basic back then, and the site was only to replace an email list, so the design was very basic. And because Craig wanted the site to reflect the personal nature of his email list, banner ads and corporate branding were never made a part of the template.
Sure, with a growing site come growing costs, and eventually, the site had to start making a little money to make ends meet. Craig figured that Landlords, employers, and other users who were using the site for commercial gain would pay a small listing fee. The remainder of the site would remain free for the public to use, and remains that way today.
The list was, and still is meant to be local in nature; the idea of neighbors helping neighbors. As a result, and to the dismay of many users, the website never adopted a national search engine, or even the ability to search throughout your state. Despite these shortcomings, the site is still ranked among the most popular in the USA and used by millions each month.
