Craig Newmark, Customer Service Representative and Founder, craigslist (United States)
craigslist’s four billion-plus page views per month make it one of the top 30 Internet companies worldwide, seventh among Internet companies in the United States. In August 2004, eBay acquired 25% of craigslist.
Craig will speak at PICNIC ’06 on Thursday, September 28 about e-commerce as a social activity and a huge entertainment business.
What’s the relationship between a site like Craig's List and the entertainment world?
Newmark: Well, a lot of people need to feel connected to others, and want genuine windows into the lives of others. For that reason, our Missed Connections site is very popular, as well as all the other personals categories. Also, a lot of people like browsing for sale, barter and the free categories for the kind of entertainment that shopping comprises. Indirectly, people in the entertainment industry use our site a lot to locate participants in movies and TV.
With Craig's list and your other work, you have also started to work on different ways of organizing news content and news media. Tell us more.
Newmark: I'm marginally involved in daylife.com, a venture led by Jeff Jarvis and Upendra Shardanand, which is focused on helping masses of people find trustworthy news. They have serious backing and I hope to be using the beta soon. Dan Gillmor [another PICNIC ’06 speaker] has a foundation, citmedia.org, and its first project is to figure out just what the state of the art is in citizen journalism, and I'm a small part in that. Finally, the Sunlight Foundation and the Center for Media and Democracy has launched congresspedia.org, like wikipedia, for the US Congress, and I'm advising them in a small way.
Who uses Craig's List and why? How is Craig's List doing in Europe?
Newmark: Pretty much everyone who uses the 'net in cities we serve. I believe we track usual 'net demographics. We're growing well in Europe though we've been remiss. We haven't supported multiple languages yet. FYI, we’re launching 100 new cities very soon.
In your bio, you compare yourself to George Costanza. Explain.
Newmark: Mostly a joke, referring to a character on the TV show Seinfeld. There's a considerable physical and ethnic resemblance.
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