12 ms·

Craig Newmark, the Principled Jerk

126 points by lloydarmbrust 14y ago

rubidium 14y ago
Lay off the personal attacks. No place here. Any company is entitled to whatever they provide and it's not your place to sit as judge. People give them the information, for free. Craigslist displays it, for free. Unless someone sues Craigslist for some sort of anti-trust regulation, the challenge for people desiring to compete in the Craigslist's market is to build something from the ground up. (Oh, and it's always a market people are after, it's not "Oh, we want to help people find apartments better because we're nice people"). The fact that it's difficult is the entrepreneur's problem, not Craigs.
- badclient 14y ago
  and it's not your place to sit as judge Strongly disagree. Just as a company is entitled to provide whatever they wish, consumers are entitled to form views of the company based on their actions.
  - zachinglis 14y ago
    Correct. And it's our job to judge the company, not an employee of that company.
    - mike-cardwell 14y ago
      When did we stop being allowed to judge people by their actions?
    - mtoddh 14y ago
      It seems like more of the people dissatisfied with Craigslist would be directing their ire at the CEO (Jim Buckmaster), and not Craig himself. Of the two I would assume (perhaps incorrectly) that despite the "Craig" in Craiglist, it would be the CEO responsible for the decisions this company is making...
      - dredmorbius 14y ago
        That's the one fair criticism to make. Though Craig is AFAIU a or the principle shareholder in Craigslist.
    - jonny_eh 14y ago
      A company is just 1:N people trying to accomplish something (usually earn profit). I would usually agree that it's best to treat a company separate from the individuals there. But in the case of Craigslist it may be fair since Craig has full control of the company, and the companies latest actions are clearly done by either his command or with his consent. Not to mention his name is on the freaking company! Hard to separate the two when that happens. If you have a problem with Craig's List, why not complain about Craig?
    - fusiongyro 14y ago
      Craig of Craigslist isn't exactly the same as any old employee of any old company. I understand the distinction you're trying to make, but the fact that it's hard in this case is a side-effect of the context they've worked very hard to create. In other words, they're asking for it.
    - ktizo 14y ago
      The company, regardless of laws that claim individual rights for corporations, is not something that can be judged independently of the people who comprise it. If you judge a company you are by definition judging it's employees, owners, shareholders, etc. If you are not considering the people, then a company itself is almost nothing.
    - edj 14y ago
      A corporation is a legal device, but is, of course, made up of individuals. To judge a company is to judge individuals working in concert. From the OED: "company ... 2 A number of individuals assembled or associated together; a body of people combined for some common object."
  - edj 14y ago
    consumers are entitled to form views of the company based on their actions. And arguably not just entitled to form views, but morally obligated to do so. In a mostly unregulated industry (like classified ads), the court of public opinion is one of the more powerful checks civil society can deploy to police corporations. Boycotts, bad press, strikes, activism, and the like can all change corporate behavior to some extent. For most people, these tools are the only way to influence corporations. Most people don't have the money to lobby Congress. "Voting with your dollars" doesn't really work with monopolies, or quasi-monopolies. And founding competing startups is a fantasy even for most entrepreneurially-minded hackers, let alone regular folk with families, mortgages, and no programming skill. If we say these methods shouldn't ever be used, we're basically saying only laws can regulate corporate behavior. That sounds like a recipe for more and worse laws, more lobbying, and worse corporate behavior.
- DenisM 14y ago
  "Legally rightful" is often different from "morally rightful". Craig is morally in the wrong - he seized control over classifieds market, and is now using that position to stall the progress and harm consumers. By way of analogy, saying "build your own stuff" is akin to saying "build your own popular OS and sell it to OEMs" in the face of a crushing Microsoft monopoly on the nineties. The network effect is far too strong for a free-market approach to work its magic, and as a result we all suffer. I wonder if Craig realizes he became a Microsoft-style monopoly. That should be a very uncomfortable thought to him.
  - smacktoward 14y ago
    he seized control over classifieds market You say "seized control" like he showed up with a bunch of armed goons and wrested it away from its rightful owner. Craigslist dominates online classifieds because they recognized it was a market worth serving years before the incumbents in classifieds did, and served it. It's not a crime to get there first. I wonder if Craig realizes he became a Microsoft-style monopoly I must have missed the part where Craigslist used their dominant position in classified advertising to unfairly benefit other products they offer.
    - lotyrin 14y ago
      Grandparent obviously meant the entrenched-but-ultimately-mediocre sort of monopoly. What Microsoft has individually gotten hand slapped for isn't as important as the history of their character.
    - jessriedel 14y ago
      > You say "seized control" like he showed up with a bunch of armed goons and wrested it away from its rightful owner. Craigslist dominates online classifieds because they recognized it was a market worth serving years before the incumbents in classifieds did, and served it. It's not a crime to get there first. I agree that "seize" is poor word choice, but the fact that he gained a monopoly position through legal competition does not negate the fact that it's a monopoly. >I must have missed the part where Craigslist used their dominant position in classified advertising to unfairly benefit other products they offer. They use it to advance an unusual philosophy. Yes, this is different from using it to get money, but the effect for those of us who do not share their philosophy are similar. If Standard Oil used the money earned from its monopoly powers to buy teddy bears for orphans, that wouldn't have reduced arguments that it was a trust and needed to be broken up. (And given Rockefeller's philanthropy, this isn't too far from the truth.) Edit (since I can't reply): network effects keep out other competitors. I don't know what "unfair practices" are defined as, I just know that monopolies insulated from competition are bad. Somewhat analogous was Standard Oil's policy of dropping their prices below cost locally long enough for small competitors to go out of business, and then raising them afterwards. New competitors were prevented from entering because Standard Oil had a reliable threat of doing it again. This didn't require Standard Oil to apply horizontal leverage (i.e. using dominance in the market for one product to influence another).
- jeremymims 14y ago
  This isn't a personal attack. It's an observation. I sincerely lack a better way to characterize Craig's behavior. Since Craigslist is as small as it is and is named after the founder, it's very difficult to explain these seemingly irrational decisions without understanding the man behind them. I think at heart he's a good guy, but he's clearly not thinking correctly here.
  - ericd 14y ago
    Hi Jeremy, thanks for writing about this. I actually think Craig has removed himself from the decision-making there, which probably explains the seeming conflict between his personality and the company's.
    - samstave 14y ago
      And it conveniently provides plausible deniability. Regardless, it's craigs list and he can never be removed from us outsiders mentally connecting him with what CL does.
      - ericd 14y ago
        Yeah, I guess it might take a name change to get people to stop assuming that Craig is in charge.
        MaysonL 14y ago
        He's in charge: he owns the place.
    - jeremymims 14y ago
      That's possible. However, if that's the case, I'm surprised Craig hasn't engaged at all on this issue. It would seem an awful lot of lousy stuff is happening in his name.
      - ericd 14y ago
- natrius 14y ago
  I agree that it's better to ascribe the responsibilities for Craigslist's recent actions to the company, not Craig Newmark. That aside, the company's actions clearly merit calling them jerks. Their customers are trying to sell, rent and employ. Craigslist forbids them to do so via any other means. Acting against the interests of its customers makes a company a jerk.
  - waterlesscloud 14y ago
    In what way is Craigslist forbidding its customers to advertise by other means? The rhetoric on this is getting ridiculous.
    - natrius 14y ago
      Craigslist now requires an exclusive license to submissions. The rhetoric is what it is because Craigslist's behavior is appalling. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/08/craigslist-tightens-grip-demanding-exclusive-ownership-of-ads/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/08/craigslist-tighte... EDIT: This article is better: http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/01/craigslist-now-wants-your-postings-under-exclusive-terms-padmapper-fallout-continues/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/01/craigslist-now-wants-your-p...
      - waterlesscloud 14y ago
        Craigslist isn't saying you can't post the same information elsewhere. They're saying they have exclusive license to your post on Craigslist. It's a seemingly subtle distinction, I'll give you that, but it in no way prevents the user from posting the same info elsewhere.
        IanDrake 14y ago
        You're missing the point. If I post the same ad directly on PadMapper (let's say), how does one know if PadMapper scraped it from Craigslist or I cross posted it? The way it reads, and the only way I can imagine it could be enforced, is that you are granting Craigslist the exclusive right to advertise that item or at the very least the exact text you used to advertise that item. Either way, it's ridiculously heavy handed.
- ktizo 14y ago
  Anyone can sit and judge on anything they wish, you can judge someone's business, their politics, their religion, whatever. You might think it is impolite, however there isn't any hard and fast rule that says anyone has to be polite either. You are judging that other people aren't allowed to judge someone else on the service they provide. Why do you feel that you can tell them the terms of what is reasonable behaviour while in the same breath tell them that it is not their place to do the same to others?
- dhyasama 14y ago
  I read it as a critique of Craig's business decisions, not a personal attack.
- rwallace 14y ago
  Craig is morally entitled to provide or not provide whatever service he wants. He is not morally entitled to behave like an organized crime boss and shut down other people's services by threat of armed force.
azylman 14y ago
To be honest, I didn't get the "principled" impression out of anything written here - I think the author was just trying to soften the blow a little bit...
ericd 14y ago
I think that Craig actually isn't behind these decisions, though, which would explain the apparent conflict between his friendly attitude and the unfriendly attitude of the company overall.
- fusiongyro 14y ago
  The company goes to some effort to maintain that "we're almost a non-profit" angle though; Jim Buckmaster's "About" page calls himself a communist, for example: http://www.craigslist.org/about/jim_buckmaster http://www.craigslist.org/about/jim_buckmaster Like it or not, Craig is basically the brand identity for Craigslist. It's going to be awfully hard for Craigslist to separate themselves meaningfully from Craig. The more discordance there is between the two, the worse it is for their brand image, whatever the motivation.
  - fleitz 14y ago
    And now Buckmaster owns your posts for the benefit of the community, sounds perfectly fitting with someone who describes themselves as communist. Soon they will roll out a special section of craigslist apartments that looks like Jony Ive designed it but it's only for party members.
bengarvey 14y ago
A while back I wrote a greasemonkey script for craigslist that allowed you to filter out any for-sale listings that didn't have pictures. It was called, NoPicsNoService, and after I was done I emailed Craig the link. He emailed me back that day and said it was cool. Less than a year later, that feature was built into craigslist.
- badclient 14y ago
  Well I'm glad it took them less than a year to add another condition to their sql query.
  - bengarvey 14y ago
    Also, a checkbox.
mapgrep 14y ago
"They’re not concerned with fixing anything for newspapers because Craig refuses to accept responsibility for helping break them." Newmark's repeated donations and support to both new online journalism endeavors and old-line journalism institutes like Knight Foundation are a matter of public record. An example Google search: http://www.google.com/search?q=craig+newmark+donation+(journalism+or+newspapers) http://www.google.com/search?q=craig+newmark+donation+(journ... Newmark has expressly stated that he makes these donations of time and money partly because of the role Craigslist played in disrupting newspapers. I find it especially impressive that he does this given that he has nothing to apologize for. Newspaper classifieds were insanely expensive and huge cash cows.
- jeremymims 14y ago
  Keep in mind that I was explaining to a newspaper publisher why Craigslist would not work with them to help them make more money. Craig's focus is on building tools that help fact-check stories and help news organizations remain trustworthy, not efforts to help increase monetization. That's fine, but it's a bit like polishing the brass on the Titanic. From NiemanLab: "Craig Newmark’s most recently announced project, CraigConnects, is, as best as I can tell, a way of funneling Newmark’s attention capital towards (mostly) nonprofit organizations." Attention capital is nice and welcome, but hardly the thing that will save good journalism.
debacle 14y ago
I'd like to offer up a different scenario: Craig Newmark, the Guy with Fuck You Money This guy is customer support. Yes, he's more than that, but he has enough money to focus on the part of the business he likes - sitting in his walled garden, pruning the content. God that has to be fulfilling. Why criticize him for that?
angrow 14y ago
A generally good post, but the claim that Newmark "refuses to take responsibility" for "breaking" newspapers is something of a howler. Newspapers do not have a monopoly on watchdog or investigative journalism, and even if there is less of that sort of reporting nowadays (a claim itself worthy of investigation and fact-checking), it can't be blamed on any one guy, no matter how successful his business.
jessriedel 14y ago
This misses the philosophy which I have been told is behind craiglist's behavior: a sort of extreme localism. They want to try to keep craigslist informal, encourage bartering instead of sales, etc. I think there are some insights buried in this philosophy, it's just that in this case craiglist is very wrong. If you actually want to understand the man and the organization (rather than just bad-mouth them) you need to address this issue.
jmduke 14y ago
I seriously don't understand the Craigslist drama. It's an incredibly basic service that is astounding because of its network effect. So if you want to compete with it, make a BETTER service. Don't rely on them. Adoption isn't going to be instantaneous, but if PadMapper's approach really is so much better than why do they need to bootstrap themselves with Craigslist-affiliated data?
- jessriedel 14y ago
  > if PadMapper's approach really is so much better than why do they need to bootstrap themselves with Craigslist-affiliated data? Because as you said: (massive) network effects. The claim is that they are effectively a monopoly. You can't tell someone "Sure it won't be instantaneous, but if you think you're so much better than Standard Oil, just go out-compete them."
  - Androsynth 14y ago
    SO physically owned all the oil-wells. Physical ownership is much, much different than network effects.
    - jessriedel 14y ago
      Why? Everyone needs to come to the network owner, and it isn't possible for new competitors to create their own useful network. The network effect is really the exact analogy for information-exchange businesses as physical capital was for businesses selling physical goods. Except that in one sense the network effect is even stronger: oil wells can be divvied up by a trust-busting government (and will still function) but some networks only work reasonably when monolithic. This is an argument for a monopoly administered by the government (like for road infrastructure) or a private non-profit (like wikipedia).
      - Androsynth 14y ago
        No, in SO's case, their competitors were physically incapable of entering the market (because they couldn't purchase stakes). With network effects, the barrier to entry is less for competitors to join the market and there is nothing physically forcing a user to use a monopoly. A great competitor has a realistic chance of entering your market. Plus, a slight shift in public perception and a Monopoly can become a failed business in no time. Network effects may be a significant impediment to a small business attempting to enter a market, but lets not throw around the 'monopoly' label so easily.
nostromo 14y ago
Craigslist is a business. Once you stop thinking of it as a non-profit, everything Craig does makes sense. Do you think PadMapper (if they were to overtake CL) or AirBnb or Google or anyone else will let anyone crawl their data and disrupt their revenue stream without putting up a fight? Of course not. The cognitive dissonance here is simply caused by people thinking CL is a non-profit, which he has shown it is not.
- Zombieball 14y ago
  I don't understand personally how padmapper interrupts Craigslist's revenue stream. All posts direct back to CL. I suppose you could argue that if padmapper found a new awesome data source to crawl & became so big they no longer needed craigslist and people stop bothering to check CL for rental postings THEN padmapper could be affecting their revenue stream.
  - nostromo 14y ago
    Padmapper is for-profit, just like Craigslist. Padmapper wants to eat away at CL by taking listings directly through Padlister, which is how Padmapper makes money.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    - Zombieball 14y ago
      Wow, I didn't even know about Padlister until today. I understand Craigslist's point of view a bit better now.
- jessriedel 14y ago
  I think the standard response here is that CL clearly leaves massive amounts of money on the table. It can't be modeled well as a for-profit company. Whether or not it can be modeled as a non-profit with a coherent philosophy is debatable, but just pointing out that some of its actions seem profit-driven does not eliminate the apparent conflict with other actions.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
nc 14y ago
I think this raises an interesting question about the nature of natural monopolies in technology, and the lack of competition caused by that effect. Craigslist is powerful cause of it's network effects, and it's getting away with what is most probably an inferior service.
res0nat0r 14y ago
This sounds like another person who is pissed off he can't have a piece of the CL pie (read: money). > I figured the reasonable response from Craig would have been to hire Romy and his partner or buy their technology. It’s literally what every reasonable company in the world does when innovative young people come along and make something your users want. Why should I as a CEO be expected to cater to your whims of how you think I should run my company? I hear about people complaining all the time about how ugly and cluttered Amazons website is. Would we all be hating Jeff Bezos as much as we do Craig if someone started scraping all of the Amazon.com product reviews and organizing them in a web2.0-html5-ajax-startup-cool manner and Jeff sued their pants off?
a2tech 14y ago
People that say Craigslist is broken are utterly, incomprehensibly, wrong. Its an ugly website. It lacks features people on this website think it needs. But average people love it AS IS. The tone of this article makes it seem like Craigslist killed the newspaper industry-and paints Craig as the bad guy. Newspapers failed to adapt. Full period, stop. Craig invented a tiny website for his neighborhood and it went crazy popular and spread across the country. His product isn't what we want-but it is what he and most of the people using it want.
- pessimizer 14y ago
  For me the site nearly causes physical pain to look for anything specific on. For every non-tech person I know, they still think it's the best site ever made, and some of them sit on it all day like facebook addicts. And I'll be damned, but when I wanted to get rid of some trash in my house that I thought someone else might've found useful, I had the ad up in 20 minutes. Before the sun went down, all of it was gone and I had a couple of $20s in my pocket. I didn't have every move monetized, they didn't make me pay per message after the 3rd response, and I'm pretty sure they actually deleted my ad [at some point] after I pressed delete. I trust Newmark's stewardship, and hopefully this Padmapper thing shakes them up enough to introduce a non-intrusive interface for apartment hunting that makes my head hurt less.
stmartin 14y ago
Wanna beat craigslist? Create a similar service, combine it with padmapper, remove the smut - which was the primary reason why craigslist got "popular" (or notorious, I should say), make it simple enough to use for the average user, and promote the hell out of it. People will come. Last thing we need is more rapists and murderers coming in through craigslist.....
koeselitz 14y ago
At this point, it seems as though journalism made an extraordinarily dire mistake in relying principally on revenue streams that are entirely distinct from their central business. Shouldn't journalism rather have sought to monetize the thing it does best - journalism? If it had, maybe it wouldn't be in this mess right now.
- czr80 14y ago
  This seems a strange comment to make, given how much of the web is advertising funded. Or do you think Google should charge users a subscription fee?
dredmorbius 14y ago
My Eric DeMenthon's own admission, Craigslist offered a data sharing/licensing agreement of $5000 and 10% of revenues. That's pretty reasonable. If PadMapper can't cover this through its own business model, perhaps there just isn't much money on the table? http://go.bloomberg.com/tech-blog/2012-07-25-craigslist-goes-after-website-developers-usings-its-data http://go.bloomberg.com/tech-blog/2012-07-25-craigslist-goes... "Principled businessman" seems a bit more fair than Jeremy's blog post would suggest. And, as always, there's a lot nobody but Craig (and Jim) and Eric know. I'm seeing one heck of a PR game being waged.
- xanados 14y ago
  That is not fully accurate. Craigslist offered a licensing agreement for MOBILE ONLY: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/07/craigslist-sues-padmapper-for-copyright-infringement/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/07/craigslist-sues-p... Given that PadMapper is a desktop-focused website (and the mobile experience is terrible, so I imagine 90% of their use is desktop), this is sort of a non-starter. It would be as if the Apple were willing to license Samsung their design patents but only on the Newton.
  - dredmorbius 14y ago
    Web only? ORLY? https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.padmapper&feature=nav_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDMsImNvbS5wYWRtYXBwZXIiXQ. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.padmapper&.... Edit: oh, not what you said. Granted, yes, I found the PM desktop tool much more useful than mobile, though mobile was good enough to use when I was roaming around town.
gwern 14y ago
> He has very odd priorities. Craig spends his days manually removing flagged spam in a terminal view. You and me, we can’t understand someone like this. Is this true?
rprasad 14y ago
tl;dr: whine, whine whine.
gojomo 14y ago
Remember, Craigslist's best-funded competitor is Kijiji/eBayClassifieds. Craigslist has alleged eBay improperly used its minority stake and one-time board seat at Craigslist to help launch Kijiji using proprietary knowledge of Craigslist. An initial lawsuit over some of the issues in Delaware resulted in a split decision in 2010: eBay lost its board seat but the move by the other CL shareholders to dilute eBay's stake was reversed. Another lawsuit in California appears to be still in a lengthy discovery process, more than a year after a judge ruled against eBay's motion to dismiss, if I'm interpreting the data here correctly: http://webaccess.sftc.org/Scripts/Magic94/mgrqispi94.dll?APPNAME=IJS&PRGNAME=ROA22&ARGUMENTS=-ACGC08475276 http://webaccess.sftc.org/Scripts/Magic94/mgrqispi94.dll?APP... As a result... • Craigslist may seem paranoid but perhaps justifiably so • Craiglist may not want to grant an inch to anyone that might then also be used by Kijiji/eBay, with their near-bottomless pockets, to embrace/extend/extinguish the Craiglist core service • this sort of lengthy deep-discovery process can distract management and also impair internal communications/flexibility, knowing every word could become discovered fodder for a current (or future) lawsuit Any assessment that Craigslist is being a 'jerk' about competitive issues, without considering this giant factor, is missing a giant part of the picture.

126 points by lloydarmbrust 14y ago

Lay off the personal attacks. No place here. Any company is entitled to whatever they provide and it's not your place to sit as judge. People give them the information, for free. Craigslist displays it, for free. Unless someone sues Craigslist for some sort of anti-trust regulation, the challenge for people desiring to compete in the Craigslist's market is to build something from the ground up. (Oh, and it's always a market people are after, it's not "Oh, we want to help people find apartments better because we're nice people"). The fact that it's difficult is the entrepreneur's problem, not Craigs.

badclient 14y ago
and it's not your place to sit as judge Strongly disagree. Just as a company is entitled to provide whatever they wish, consumers are entitled to form views of the company based on their actions.
- zachinglis 14y ago
  Correct. And it's our job to judge the company, not an employee of that company.
  - mike-cardwell 14y ago
    When did we stop being allowed to judge people by their actions?
  - mtoddh 14y ago
    It seems like more of the people dissatisfied with Craigslist would be directing their ire at the CEO (Jim Buckmaster), and not Craig himself. Of the two I would assume (perhaps incorrectly) that despite the "Craig" in Craiglist, it would be the CEO responsible for the decisions this company is making...
    - dredmorbius 14y ago
      That's the one fair criticism to make. Though Craig is AFAIU a or the principle shareholder in Craigslist.
  - jonny_eh 14y ago
    A company is just 1:N people trying to accomplish something (usually earn profit). I would usually agree that it's best to treat a company separate from the individuals there. But in the case of Craigslist it may be fair since Craig has full control of the company, and the companies latest actions are clearly done by either his command or with his consent. Not to mention his name is on the freaking company! Hard to separate the two when that happens. If you have a problem with Craig's List, why not complain about Craig?
  - fusiongyro 14y ago
    Craig of Craigslist isn't exactly the same as any old employee of any old company. I understand the distinction you're trying to make, but the fact that it's hard in this case is a side-effect of the context they've worked very hard to create. In other words, they're asking for it.
  - ktizo 14y ago
    The company, regardless of laws that claim individual rights for corporations, is not something that can be judged independently of the people who comprise it. If you judge a company you are by definition judging it's employees, owners, shareholders, etc. If you are not considering the people, then a company itself is almost nothing.
  - edj 14y ago
    A corporation is a legal device, but is, of course, made up of individuals. To judge a company is to judge individuals working in concert. From the OED: "company ... 2 A number of individuals assembled or associated together; a body of people combined for some common object."
- edj 14y ago
  consumers are entitled to form views of the company based on their actions. And arguably not just entitled to form views, but morally obligated to do so. In a mostly unregulated industry (like classified ads), the court of public opinion is one of the more powerful checks civil society can deploy to police corporations. Boycotts, bad press, strikes, activism, and the like can all change corporate behavior to some extent. For most people, these tools are the only way to influence corporations. Most people don't have the money to lobby Congress. "Voting with your dollars" doesn't really work with monopolies, or quasi-monopolies. And founding competing startups is a fantasy even for most entrepreneurially-minded hackers, let alone regular folk with families, mortgages, and no programming skill. If we say these methods shouldn't ever be used, we're basically saying only laws can regulate corporate behavior. That sounds like a recipe for more and worse laws, more lobbying, and worse corporate behavior.
DenisM 14y ago
"Legally rightful" is often different from "morally rightful". Craig is morally in the wrong - he seized control over classifieds market, and is now using that position to stall the progress and harm consumers. By way of analogy, saying "build your own stuff" is akin to saying "build your own popular OS and sell it to OEMs" in the face of a crushing Microsoft monopoly on the nineties. The network effect is far too strong for a free-market approach to work its magic, and as a result we all suffer. I wonder if Craig realizes he became a Microsoft-style monopoly. That should be a very uncomfortable thought to him.
- smacktoward 14y ago
  he seized control over classifieds market You say "seized control" like he showed up with a bunch of armed goons and wrested it away from its rightful owner. Craigslist dominates online classifieds because they recognized it was a market worth serving years before the incumbents in classifieds did, and served it. It's not a crime to get there first. I wonder if Craig realizes he became a Microsoft-style monopoly I must have missed the part where Craigslist used their dominant position in classified advertising to unfairly benefit other products they offer.
  - lotyrin 14y ago
    Grandparent obviously meant the entrenched-but-ultimately-mediocre sort of monopoly. What Microsoft has individually gotten hand slapped for isn't as important as the history of their character.
  - jessriedel 14y ago
    > You say "seized control" like he showed up with a bunch of armed goons and wrested it away from its rightful owner. Craigslist dominates online classifieds because they recognized it was a market worth serving years before the incumbents in classifieds did, and served it. It's not a crime to get there first. I agree that "seize" is poor word choice, but the fact that he gained a monopoly position through legal competition does not negate the fact that it's a monopoly. >I must have missed the part where Craigslist used their dominant position in classified advertising to unfairly benefit other products they offer. They use it to advance an unusual philosophy. Yes, this is different from using it to get money, but the effect for those of us who do not share their philosophy are similar. If Standard Oil used the money earned from its monopoly powers to buy teddy bears for orphans, that wouldn't have reduced arguments that it was a trust and needed to be broken up. (And given Rockefeller's philanthropy, this isn't too far from the truth.) Edit (since I can't reply): network effects keep out other competitors. I don't know what "unfair practices" are defined as, I just know that monopolies insulated from competition are bad. Somewhat analogous was Standard Oil's policy of dropping their prices below cost locally long enough for small competitors to go out of business, and then raising them afterwards. New competitors were prevented from entering because Standard Oil had a reliable threat of doing it again. This didn't require Standard Oil to apply horizontal leverage (i.e. using dominance in the market for one product to influence another).
jeremymims 14y ago
This isn't a personal attack. It's an observation. I sincerely lack a better way to characterize Craig's behavior. Since Craigslist is as small as it is and is named after the founder, it's very difficult to explain these seemingly irrational decisions without understanding the man behind them. I think at heart he's a good guy, but he's clearly not thinking correctly here.
- ericd 14y ago
  Hi Jeremy, thanks for writing about this. I actually think Craig has removed himself from the decision-making there, which probably explains the seeming conflict between his personality and the company's.
  - samstave 14y ago
    And it conveniently provides plausible deniability. Regardless, it's craigs list and he can never be removed from us outsiders mentally connecting him with what CL does.
    - ericd 14y ago
      Yeah, I guess it might take a name change to get people to stop assuming that Craig is in charge.
      - MaysonL 14y ago
        He's in charge: he owns the place.
  - jeremymims 14y ago
    That's possible. However, if that's the case, I'm surprised Craig hasn't engaged at all on this issue. It would seem an awful lot of lousy stuff is happening in his name.
    - ericd 14y ago
natrius 14y ago
I agree that it's better to ascribe the responsibilities for Craigslist's recent actions to the company, not Craig Newmark. That aside, the company's actions clearly merit calling them jerks. Their customers are trying to sell, rent and employ. Craigslist forbids them to do so via any other means. Acting against the interests of its customers makes a company a jerk.
- waterlesscloud 14y ago
  In what way is Craigslist forbidding its customers to advertise by other means? The rhetoric on this is getting ridiculous.
  - natrius 14y ago
    Craigslist now requires an exclusive license to submissions. The rhetoric is what it is because Craigslist's behavior is appalling. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/08/craigslist-tightens-grip-demanding-exclusive-ownership-of-ads/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/08/craigslist-tighte... EDIT: This article is better: http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/01/craigslist-now-wants-your-postings-under-exclusive-terms-padmapper-fallout-continues/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/01/craigslist-now-wants-your-p...
    - waterlesscloud 14y ago
      Craigslist isn't saying you can't post the same information elsewhere. They're saying they have exclusive license to your post on Craigslist. It's a seemingly subtle distinction, I'll give you that, but it in no way prevents the user from posting the same info elsewhere.
      - IanDrake 14y ago
        You're missing the point. If I post the same ad directly on PadMapper (let's say), how does one know if PadMapper scraped it from Craigslist or I cross posted it? The way it reads, and the only way I can imagine it could be enforced, is that you are granting Craigslist the exclusive right to advertise that item or at the very least the exact text you used to advertise that item. Either way, it's ridiculously heavy handed.
ktizo 14y ago
Anyone can sit and judge on anything they wish, you can judge someone's business, their politics, their religion, whatever. You might think it is impolite, however there isn't any hard and fast rule that says anyone has to be polite either. You are judging that other people aren't allowed to judge someone else on the service they provide. Why do you feel that you can tell them the terms of what is reasonable behaviour while in the same breath tell them that it is not their place to do the same to others?
dhyasama 14y ago
I read it as a critique of Craig's business decisions, not a personal attack.
rwallace 14y ago
Craig is morally entitled to provide or not provide whatever service he wants. He is not morally entitled to behave like an organized crime boss and shut down other people's services by threat of armed force.

azylman 14y ago

To be honest, I didn't get the "principled" impression out of anything written here - I think the author was just trying to soften the blow a little bit...

ericd 14y ago

I think that Craig actually isn't behind these decisions, though, which would explain the apparent conflict between his friendly attitude and the unfriendly attitude of the company overall.

fusiongyro 14y ago
The company goes to some effort to maintain that "we're almost a non-profit" angle though; Jim Buckmaster's "About" page calls himself a communist, for example: http://www.craigslist.org/about/jim_buckmaster http://www.craigslist.org/about/jim_buckmaster Like it or not, Craig is basically the brand identity for Craigslist. It's going to be awfully hard for Craigslist to separate themselves meaningfully from Craig. The more discordance there is between the two, the worse it is for their brand image, whatever the motivation.
- fleitz 14y ago
  And now Buckmaster owns your posts for the benefit of the community, sounds perfectly fitting with someone who describes themselves as communist. Soon they will roll out a special section of craigslist apartments that looks like Jony Ive designed it but it's only for party members.

bengarvey 14y ago

A while back I wrote a greasemonkey script for craigslist that allowed you to filter out any for-sale listings that didn't have pictures. It was called, NoPicsNoService, and after I was done I emailed Craig the link. He emailed me back that day and said it was cool. Less than a year later, that feature was built into craigslist.

badclient 14y ago
Well I'm glad it took them less than a year to add another condition to their sql query.
- bengarvey 14y ago
  Also, a checkbox.

mapgrep 14y ago

"They’re not concerned with fixing anything for newspapers because Craig refuses to accept responsibility for helping break them." Newmark's repeated donations and support to both new online journalism endeavors and old-line journalism institutes like Knight Foundation are a matter of public record. An example Google search: http://www.google.com/search?q=craig+newmark+donation+(journalism+or+newspapers) http://www.google.com/search?q=craig+newmark+donation+(journ... Newmark has expressly stated that he makes these donations of time and money partly because of the role Craigslist played in disrupting newspapers. I find it especially impressive that he does this given that he has nothing to apologize for. Newspaper classifieds were insanely expensive and huge cash cows.

jeremymims 14y ago
Keep in mind that I was explaining to a newspaper publisher why Craigslist would not work with them to help them make more money. Craig's focus is on building tools that help fact-check stories and help news organizations remain trustworthy, not efforts to help increase monetization. That's fine, but it's a bit like polishing the brass on the Titanic. From NiemanLab: "Craig Newmark’s most recently announced project, CraigConnects, is, as best as I can tell, a way of funneling Newmark’s attention capital towards (mostly) nonprofit organizations." Attention capital is nice and welcome, but hardly the thing that will save good journalism.

debacle 14y ago

I'd like to offer up a different scenario: Craig Newmark, the Guy with Fuck You Money This guy is customer support. Yes, he's more than that, but he has enough money to focus on the part of the business he likes - sitting in his walled garden, pruning the content. God that has to be fulfilling. Why criticize him for that?

angrow 14y ago

A generally good post, but the claim that Newmark "refuses to take responsibility" for "breaking" newspapers is something of a howler. Newspapers do not have a monopoly on watchdog or investigative journalism, and even if there is less of that sort of reporting nowadays (a claim itself worthy of investigation and fact-checking), it can't be blamed on any one guy, no matter how successful his business.

jessriedel 14y ago

This misses the philosophy which I have been told is behind craiglist's behavior: a sort of extreme localism. They want to try to keep craigslist informal, encourage bartering instead of sales, etc. I think there are some insights buried in this philosophy, it's just that in this case craiglist is very wrong. If you actually want to understand the man and the organization (rather than just bad-mouth them) you need to address this issue.

jmduke 14y ago

I seriously don't understand the Craigslist drama. It's an incredibly basic service that is astounding because of its network effect. So if you want to compete with it, make a BETTER service. Don't rely on them. Adoption isn't going to be instantaneous, but if PadMapper's approach really is so much better than why do they need to bootstrap themselves with Craigslist-affiliated data?

jessriedel 14y ago
> if PadMapper's approach really is so much better than why do they need to bootstrap themselves with Craigslist-affiliated data? Because as you said: (massive) network effects. The claim is that they are effectively a monopoly. You can't tell someone "Sure it won't be instantaneous, but if you think you're so much better than Standard Oil, just go out-compete them."
- Androsynth 14y ago
  SO physically owned all the oil-wells. Physical ownership is much, much different than network effects.
  - jessriedel 14y ago
    Why? Everyone needs to come to the network owner, and it isn't possible for new competitors to create their own useful network. The network effect is really the exact analogy for information-exchange businesses as physical capital was for businesses selling physical goods. Except that in one sense the network effect is even stronger: oil wells can be divvied up by a trust-busting government (and will still function) but some networks only work reasonably when monolithic. This is an argument for a monopoly administered by the government (like for road infrastructure) or a private non-profit (like wikipedia).
    - Androsynth 14y ago
      No, in SO's case, their competitors were physically incapable of entering the market (because they couldn't purchase stakes). With network effects, the barrier to entry is less for competitors to join the market and there is nothing physically forcing a user to use a monopoly. A great competitor has a realistic chance of entering your market. Plus, a slight shift in public perception and a Monopoly can become a failed business in no time. Network effects may be a significant impediment to a small business attempting to enter a market, but lets not throw around the 'monopoly' label so easily.

nostromo 14y ago

Craigslist is a business. Once you stop thinking of it as a non-profit, everything Craig does makes sense. Do you think PadMapper (if they were to overtake CL) or AirBnb or Google or anyone else will let anyone crawl their data and disrupt their revenue stream without putting up a fight? Of course not. The cognitive dissonance here is simply caused by people thinking CL is a non-profit, which he has shown it is not.

Zombieball 14y ago
I don't understand personally how padmapper interrupts Craigslist's revenue stream. All posts direct back to CL. I suppose you could argue that if padmapper found a new awesome data source to crawl & became so big they no longer needed craigslist and people stop bothering to check CL for rental postings THEN padmapper could be affecting their revenue stream.
- nostromo 14y ago
  Padmapper is for-profit, just like Craigslist. Padmapper wants to eat away at CL by taking listings directly through Padlister, which is how Padmapper makes money.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - Zombieball 14y ago
    Wow, I didn't even know about Padlister until today. I understand Craigslist's point of view a bit better now.
jessriedel 14y ago
I think the standard response here is that CL clearly leaves massive amounts of money on the table. It can't be modeled well as a for-profit company. Whether or not it can be modeled as a non-profit with a coherent philosophy is debatable, but just pointing out that some of its actions seem profit-driven does not eliminate the apparent conflict with other actions.

deleted 14y ago

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nc 14y ago

I think this raises an interesting question about the nature of natural monopolies in technology, and the lack of competition caused by that effect. Craigslist is powerful cause of it's network effects, and it's getting away with what is most probably an inferior service.

res0nat0r 14y ago

This sounds like another person who is pissed off he can't have a piece of the CL pie (read: money). > I figured the reasonable response from Craig would have been to hire Romy and his partner or buy their technology. It’s literally what every reasonable company in the world does when innovative young people come along and make something your users want. Why should I as a CEO be expected to cater to your whims of how you think I should run my company? I hear about people complaining all the time about how ugly and cluttered Amazons website is. Would we all be hating Jeff Bezos as much as we do Craig if someone started scraping all of the Amazon.com product reviews and organizing them in a web2.0-html5-ajax-startup-cool manner and Jeff sued their pants off?

a2tech 14y ago

People that say Craigslist is broken are utterly, incomprehensibly, wrong. Its an ugly website. It lacks features people on this website think it needs. But average people love it AS IS. The tone of this article makes it seem like Craigslist killed the newspaper industry-and paints Craig as the bad guy. Newspapers failed to adapt. Full period, stop. Craig invented a tiny website for his neighborhood and it went crazy popular and spread across the country. His product isn't what we want-but it is what he and most of the people using it want.

pessimizer 14y ago
For me the site nearly causes physical pain to look for anything specific on. For every non-tech person I know, they still think it's the best site ever made, and some of them sit on it all day like facebook addicts. And I'll be damned, but when I wanted to get rid of some trash in my house that I thought someone else might've found useful, I had the ad up in 20 minutes. Before the sun went down, all of it was gone and I had a couple of $20s in my pocket. I didn't have every move monetized, they didn't make me pay per message after the 3rd response, and I'm pretty sure they actually deleted my ad [at some point] after I pressed delete. I trust Newmark's stewardship, and hopefully this Padmapper thing shakes them up enough to introduce a non-intrusive interface for apartment hunting that makes my head hurt less.

stmartin 14y ago

Wanna beat craigslist? Create a similar service, combine it with padmapper, remove the smut - which was the primary reason why craigslist got "popular" (or notorious, I should say), make it simple enough to use for the average user, and promote the hell out of it. People will come. Last thing we need is more rapists and murderers coming in through craigslist.....

koeselitz 14y ago

At this point, it seems as though journalism made an extraordinarily dire mistake in relying principally on revenue streams that are entirely distinct from their central business. Shouldn't journalism rather have sought to monetize the thing it does best - journalism? If it had, maybe it wouldn't be in this mess right now.

czr80 14y ago
This seems a strange comment to make, given how much of the web is advertising funded. Or do you think Google should charge users a subscription fee?

dredmorbius 14y ago

My Eric DeMenthon's own admission, Craigslist offered a data sharing/licensing agreement of $5000 and 10% of revenues. That's pretty reasonable. If PadMapper can't cover this through its own business model, perhaps there just isn't much money on the table? http://go.bloomberg.com/tech-blog/2012-07-25-craigslist-goes-after-website-developers-usings-its-data http://go.bloomberg.com/tech-blog/2012-07-25-craigslist-goes... "Principled businessman" seems a bit more fair than Jeremy's blog post would suggest. And, as always, there's a lot nobody but Craig (and Jim) and Eric know. I'm seeing one heck of a PR game being waged.

xanados 14y ago
That is not fully accurate. Craigslist offered a licensing agreement for MOBILE ONLY: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/07/craigslist-sues-padmapper-for-copyright-infringement/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/07/craigslist-sues-p... Given that PadMapper is a desktop-focused website (and the mobile experience is terrible, so I imagine 90% of their use is desktop), this is sort of a non-starter. It would be as if the Apple were willing to license Samsung their design patents but only on the Newton.
- dredmorbius 14y ago
  Web only? ORLY? https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.padmapper&feature=nav_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDMsImNvbS5wYWRtYXBwZXIiXQ. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.padmapper&.... Edit: oh, not what you said. Granted, yes, I found the PM desktop tool much more useful than mobile, though mobile was good enough to use when I was roaming around town.

gwern 14y ago

> He has very odd priorities. Craig spends his days manually removing flagged spam in a terminal view. You and me, we can’t understand someone like this. Is this true?

rprasad 14y ago

tl;dr: whine, whine whine.

gojomo 14y ago

Remember, Craigslist's best-funded competitor is Kijiji/eBayClassifieds. Craigslist has alleged eBay improperly used its minority stake and one-time board seat at Craigslist to help launch Kijiji using proprietary knowledge of Craigslist. An initial lawsuit over some of the issues in Delaware resulted in a split decision in 2010: eBay lost its board seat but the move by the other CL shareholders to dilute eBay's stake was reversed. Another lawsuit in California appears to be still in a lengthy discovery process, more than a year after a judge ruled against eBay's motion to dismiss, if I'm interpreting the data here correctly: http://webaccess.sftc.org/Scripts/Magic94/mgrqispi94.dll?APPNAME=IJS&PRGNAME=ROA22&ARGUMENTS=-ACGC08475276 http://webaccess.sftc.org/Scripts/Magic94/mgrqispi94.dll?APP... As a result... • Craigslist may seem paranoid but perhaps justifiably so • Craiglist may not want to grant an inch to anyone that might then also be used by Kijiji/eBay, with their near-bottomless pockets, to embrace/extend/extinguish the Craiglist core service • this sort of lengthy deep-discovery process can distract management and also impair internal communications/flexibility, knowing every word could become discovered fodder for a current (or future) lawsuit Any assessment that Craigslist is being a 'jerk' about competitive issues, without considering this giant factor, is missing a giant part of the picture.