Craig’s List and The Good Web
Posted on September 28, 2006
Filed Under People's Web 2.0 |
Craig Newmark is notoriously self-effacing about the success of Craig’s List and famously uninterested in monetising hus business beyond his needs. On the stage at Crossmedia Week a couple of questions from the audience inferred that Craig’s List could be a more collaborative environment for other companies in the social network’s scene - akin to saying, Craig if you don’t monetise it, can we?
Newmark’s reaction was - we could make ten or a hundred times more money out of Craig’s List, we just don’t want to.
I caught up with Jet-lagged Craig over coffee, he was good enough to spare a few minutes, and so I put to him that his attitude is surely unique for somebody coming from the US West Coast?
Not at all he responded and named Ebay and Google as essentially good companies that share his values. They’ve made decisions about money, he thinks, that relate to their businesses but they are basically there as a force for good. Pro-social as he puts it. He also made the point that companies with a modest set of values tend not to shout about it.
What are his values? The ones I was taught at school, he says. The ones we were all taught at school. “Give other people a break is a big one,” he says.
Craig insists his company began with one good idea but since then they’re been good listeners and they adapt to what their users want. Seems difficult for other people to accept that by listening to his users he’s not over monetised the site.
What’s also interesting is that people here have been trying to shoehorn Craig’s List into the social network model when in reality it’s an eleven year old classifieds’ site.
Craig believes the connection is that Craig’s List does allow people to make contact with emotions. For example Craig’s Missed Connections feature is very popular - allowing people to try making contact with those they met and didn’t get contact details from or felt uneasy asking. That would seem to put them into the social networking space but I think he has a good take on this - for example he (and Mark Canter) says that MySpace is essentially about music.
So we should forget social networking as a differentiator? Possibly so. What happens between people is defining the community not the fact of connectivity.
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