That ethos defined the company. Newmark and Buckmaster rebuffed ideas for expansion — like adding user reviews — because it would make Craigslist easier to game and harder to moderate."
Ye. The right call. User reviews worked great for some years until the KPI became the target.
The Swiss army chainsaw saw some things.
Probably deliberately so, as it was cannibalising eBay.
My takeaway from this article:
- Craiglist was launched by a 40-year old, ex-IBM enginner. It started out as an online list for his circle of friends.
- The main competitor then was "Classifieds" section in newspapers. Craigslist out-competed them by simply being a better medium (No word-count limit + photo support).
- Meanwhile, newspaper executives failed to respond in a meaning manner. By 2010, 70% of their classified ad business was gone.
Craig seems to be fully retired by now, focusing on his philanthropy work, which I think is awesome.
B) newspapers were decimated in country X
Conclusion: ???
Just because a country didn't have Craig's List, there's similar services all over the place reducing ad revenue.
Newspaper's had everyone's attention and then they lost it to a million and one alternatives on the internet.
The phone was a major driver but newspapers had been in structural decline for decades as non internet alternatives for attention grew too. Warren Buffet called it in 1991.
It suggests the newspaper funding model was already broken — they just didn't know it until the internet came along.
Of course by my own fucked up logic then any enterprise making money based on advertisements is on a precarious footing since no one engages in their business for the ads.
They did not want any computer science people in the company boards or top management level.
Their articles are still written in the same style as when paper ruled. We still only get 1 or 2 photos per article even when it's easy to snap 10-20 photos.
We don't get links to other sites. Articles that says "Apple's press release announced xyz" never links to the press release.
indigodaddy•3h ago
voxadam•3h ago