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Craigslist nets tens of millions in profits each year, most of which I would assume ends up eventually in Craig Newmark and Jim Buckmaster's personal bank accou
by jimboyoungblood 17y ago
Craigslist nets tens of millions in profits each year, most of which I would assume ends up eventually in Craig Newmark and Jim Buckmaster's personal bank accounts.
I would guess they are operating under the principle of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"
- eli 17y agoYou honestly think they're in it for the money?
- jimboyoungblood 17y agoWhat sounds like a more likely explanation for them blocking yahoo pipes? 1) They make a lot of money and want to continue doing so, and feel threatened by third party services that disintermediate them. 2) Craig is "strange" 3) Craig is "evil" There are of course other possible explanations: 4) Craigslist RSS server runs on a Pentium w/ 256MB of memory and can't scale 5) Someone at Yahoo stole Craig's girlfriend so he hates them. Any others?
- fizx 17y agomaybe he just likes being in control?
- derwiki 17y agoI'm pretty sure a lot of the money goes to: http://craigslistfoundation.org/ http://craigslistfoundation.org/ I'm also pretty sure they only charge when the community begs for it (apartment listings in major cities, as a barrier to keep out spam) and are legally obligated (escort services, http://www.seattlepi.com/business/386655_craigslist07.html http://www.seattlepi.com/business/386655_craigslist07.html)
- jimboyoungblood 17y agoIf you look at their tax returns, $650k of it went to the foundation. That's spare change relative to their probable earnings.
- shawndrost 17y agoIt's very clear that their primary motivation is not money. It would be trivial for them to squeeze much more money from their service. Craig could also sell his company for more money than he could ever spend.
- qeorge 17y agoThat's true, but they couldn't continue to run with the skeleton staff they currently do (30 people I believe). It would fundamentally change the nature of the business. I agree with you that money is not the primary motivation, but I think the choice is more complex than simply opting in or out of potential revenue.