I still remember the first time I used craigslist.org: I was looking for a place to live in San Francisco. It was the end of 2001 and a friend who used to live in SF had recommended that I check it out. Craigslist helped me find a wonderful roommate (I miss you, Anne Marie!) and a great place to live. From then on, I was hooked. I've used it dozens of times since then, sometimes posting, sometimes responding, and always amazed at how useful craigslist is.
Have something you no longer need? Take a moment, make a post and you'll undoubtedly receive several emails within hours from people who have been searching for precisely what you no longer need. Looking for a tennis partner, a temp job, a toaster oven or transsexual erotic services? You'll surely find it on craigslist.
craigslist: san francisco was already hopping when I discovered it. More than a 100 new roommate posts a day seemed like a lot to go through then and seems quaint now as it numbers far more I'm sure. When I returned to Portland in the fall of 2002, craigslist: portland paled in comparison to what I had grown used to in SF. It lacked the sub-categories that allowed, for example, artists to connect with other artists and not have to wade through postings from people wanting to share rides. More importantly, it simply lacked the traffic and awareness in the community. Everyone in SF knows about craigslist. No one in Portland knew about craigslist. Or so it seemed.
Sometime in 2003, I got frustrated and decided to do something about it. I sent an email to craigslist asking if they would add the SF subcategories to craigslist: portland. To my surprise, they appeared sometime later and the Portland site has only continued to grow in scale and scope since then. Today, I'm amazed how busy it is, given how quiet it was only a few years ago. Apparently, the Portland site is now the fourth busiest craigslist site in the world. It ranks ahead of Boston, Seattle, Austin and other tech markets.
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Last August, Craig Newmark announced that eBay had acquired a stake in craigslist. I didn't like the idea, but I gave Craig the benefit of the doubt. Since then, I have noticed small but not so subtle changes that have -- in my assessment -- degrated the core craigslist experience. First came the big legalese TOS that you had to agree to, along with an intimidating list of no-can-do's. Then the elegant original barebones format gave way to grey shaded boxes. Next came the ability to host pictures, rather than having to point to them elsewhere. Also, with each passing month, the side nav. bar appeared in smaller and smaller type as more and more cities were launched around the world. I was okay up to this point.
Then came "Accounts" so you could login -- optional for now, but starting to fundamentally change the feel of craigslist. Part of its appeal for many, I'm sure, has long been its temporary, anonymous email addresses. Being able to login once with your sales@acme.com email address might help you to manage all of your commercial postings at eBay, but somehow I doubt that the people behind some of craigslist's more interesting postings really want anyone to connect the dots. I'll be curious to see just how far eBay's growing influence goes. I'm all for new servers and improved usability, but please don't destory the simplicity that is the essence of craigslist.
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