Craigslist: the unreproducible giant
ADOTAS — If an online company was described as one that is innovation averse, publishes no account of its income or expenses, sometimes has sections rendered useless by spam and a “flag help” forum that makes fun of users, would you think that it would survive long?
Chances are you would be right except if you are talking about online classified advertising site Craigslist, where, one consulting firm estimates, revenue – tied to paid ads – could top $100 million in 2009. If ever sold, the price could reach the billions. According to Gary Wolf, the glory of the site is its size – 47 million unique users every month in the US alone – and its price – free.
“…craigslist is one of the strangest monopolies in history, where customers are locked in by fees set at zero and where the ambiance of neglect is not a way to extract more profit but the expression of a worldview.”
The future success of the site is not in the world of social networks and SMS, according to Wolf, but in corporate isolation, user anonymity, refusal of excessive profit and glacial adoption of new features. Try to foist that on your bosses at the next company meeting. Oh. The type of meeting that Craigslist would never have.
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