What is Craigslist?

Craigslist is the world’s most unique and popular site. Craigslist.org gives new meaning to the word “community,” while at the same time breathing new life into the online marketing community. For the first time ever, anyone can promote a product or service ranging from real estate to fishing lures and do it very effectively – for free! At first glance, Craigslistcan be somewhat deceiving; it has the look and feel of a small, sleepy local site that doesn’t attract much attention. Admittedly, that’s exactly how Craigslist.org got started: as a small, sleepy local site dedicated to the San Francisco community. To be completely candid, Craigslist.org won’t be winning design awards anytime soon. But behind that sleepy façade lies a giant classified ad hosting site that has turned the virtual world on its ear. Now rededicated to the whole world, Craigslist.org holds tremendous potential for your marketing efforts. Behind CraigsList – Looks Can Be Deceiving With over 5 billion page views per month and representation in nearly 500 cities throughout the world, Craigslist.org defies standard Internet logic, partly because it didn’t start out as a normal fledging start up. It had no influx of capital, no unusual master plan, and it certainly didn’t intend to take over the Internet. Simply put, it was one man’s desire to bring a community together in a simple and straightforward manner, using the Internet as a vehicle. Craigslist.org home page in its simplistic, unassuming format. It is said that Craigslist defies logic because it is not operated by traditional corporate protocol. Indeed, this is true. Wall Street experts were stunned when Craigslist.org’s financial guru Jim Buckmaster admitted the site has little interest in maximizing profits from the site, opting instead to support the community by helping users find cars, apartments, jobs, dates, and the like by allowing free posting of short classified ads. As remarkable as it may be, the concept works extremely well, as is evidenced by the nearly 13 million classified ads posted each month; a number which continues to grow at an amazing rate. Founded in 1995 by Craig Newmark, a senior programmer in the San Francisco Bay Area, Craigslist.org has established itself as an exceptionally reputable and powerful Internet business with an extremely loyal following. As of this writing, Craigslist.org is listed in 34th place overall among world web sites, and in 8th place according to Alexa.com. Only Yahoo, Google, Myspace, MSN, Ebay, Youtube, and the Facebook rank higher. With the bulk of traffic coming from the United States, other countries are catching on quickly.