Craigslist's entrepreneurial myth

China Business Report He has a very thick and vague accent, facing reporters, every question is extremely concise answer, can use a word, never use a sentence, can use a sentence, will not speak a paragraph. What he has told you has always been a variety of strange and bizarre sounds. 　　"We are not going to charge everyone who joins Craigslist in the future," we do not operate Craigslist, and those who use Craigslist operate it. 　　He is Craigslist's founder, Craig Newmark. From the San Francisco Bay Area to the world's Craigslist website, the authoritative "INC" magazine is named one of the world's sexiest and most attractive companies, with Craig Newmark on the list of Dell, the hardware host business, 　　Network game Reds Virgin and network real-time distribution of the Costco. Such a network of classified advertising sites and Myace, Youtube, Flickr and so on to become a representative of the Web2.0 site. The divergent cluster effect is the key to helping all 2.0 sites succeed, and all similar sites have greatly mobilized the enthusiasm of the user, all users are the site's "Free employees." Not only do not charge every day to help these sites to update maintenance, and even some people have to pay to join the site's membership fees. 　　When the traditional industry's fixed thinking shackles our imagination, we need to look at such multidimensional spread of the success of the road. 　　See the current management case-classified advertising website: Craigslist Global operations case. "I don't understand what business model you're studying, I just know we tried to make it into a non-profit organization, but we failed." "23-person" management of the global 175 regional outlets craigslist One months of page browsing volume has reached more than 15 billion. 　　At the nineth session of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, hosted by the world's best web site Webby Awards ceremony, Craig in his speech in his simple words: "Thank you for letting me find the spread of germs." 　　Someone found work and house on Craigslist, someone met like-minded friends, someone found a lifelong partner, someone found the most popular fashion trends every season, someone found every ornament of home decoration, no one knows, there is nothing on Craigslist can not find. In 1995, Craig began to make a list of the various arts activities in San Francisco that a lot of people wanted to know about, and began to go into Craig's list. He was advised to use his technical expertise to build a website that he wanted to name as the San Francisco events, but people would rather call it craigslist. After 11Today, Craigslist is a web site that covers 34 countries and regions in the world, with a suffix of org. 　　ebay bought 25% per cent of Craigslist from a shareholder in August 2004, but as the founder, Craig thought he would not sell the site, though the 200 million or 300 million-dollar bid was endless. "I was an engineer for 15 years at IBM and then joined the Ka Shin Bank San Francisco area and worked for three years." "Here, Craig starts taking Craigslist as a hobby. At the beginning of 1999, volunteers who had previously volunteered to support Craigslist were stuck, so he set up a company and began to charge for classified job advertisements in the districts. Craigslist currently charges in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York in 7 locations, with recruitment ads ranging from 25 to 75 dollars per piece. The other 168 cities are still free. Craigslist's charging style once gave the argument a fatal blow when VCs touted the "free" bubble of the web. "A community site that appears to be free also starts charging instead of selling ads." Melanie, a native Californian sunshine girl, said, "This is interesting, we all think that the site is a media, do not sell advertising what?" "I don't understand the business model you're studying, and I know we tried to make it into a non-profit organization, but we failed," said the cool Craig. So you can only set up a company and want to make it a profitable website. The scale is not what I thought it was, but later, we do not charge our members because we are a community website. "At present, Craigslist has 23 staff, from the founder, CEO, customer service consultants, technicians, about half of the people in the technology, half of the people in the customer service." They deal with a huge amount of information, email, and other work every day, but they can cope with the development of Craigslist around the world. "Craig's friends used to email each other or forward Craig's list," he said. Encer E. Ante, of Businessweek, talked about the development of Craigslist. As a result, Craig's message tree became a geometric progression, and its "spread virus" spread to the most vibrant bay areas of the U.S. economy and IT industry, spreading to New York and Washington, D.C., to neighboring Canada, and finally to a worldwide community platform, Although its page still does not have any adornment, ordinary monotonous even some simple. But all the readers have posted their messages on Craigslist, like free journalists and editors on the site, and the site has become more and more influential as it expands."I had only one belief: Everything came from the community. 　　Craig Newmark said, and he did. By 2005, Craigslist had grown into a 10 million dollar community website. But Newmark himself refuses to talk about income or profit. "We're still just a community site, doing services, not going public and not charging extra money," he said. The most important core of Craigslist is the authenticity of the information posted on the Web platform. "Free Lunch" market wrestling nielsen/netratings analysts believe that the size of 34 countries and 175 cities has already made Craigslist's users reach 5.7 million. The figure is twice times the size of last year, and it can be seen that its expansion is fast. But the competition caused by Craigslist is also extremely fierce. Giants such as Microsoft and Google are starting to try to launch similar products, as did the old club ebay. Their sharp weapon is the used habit and market size that has been formed. "As with the circulation of traditional media, browsing has become a decisive factor in the influence of internet media." "said Al Boer, marketing director of Lawrence Media Group. 　　If this is the way it is, Microsoft and Google will not be underestimated when it came to classifying ad networks. Lawrence College (Lawrence Eton) trained Craig, Lawrence.com's efforts are quite the opposite of Craigslist, who edited the Lawrence's Local magazine content on its website and became a typical development of a traditional media network, whose goal strategy was to bundle online advertising and magazine advertising, because the U.S. market has nurtured around 20,000 people , only through online reading to contact the media and news. Such attention was sold to advertisers, and beyond that, Lawrence was like a rich Craigslist, where cultural and artistic activities were laid out in front of Craigslist. 　　Craigslist has so far not begun to develop any other products other than the layout extension, and of course it includes charging methods. "The company will focus more on developing multi-language stations than on other functions or services." "said Jim Buckmaster, Craigslist chief executive. The technical threshold of the internet age is not as high as it was imagined, but it is less barrier than the entry of traditional industries. Microsoft and Google have started similar services. The latest version of Expo and Google's base products, ebay launched the customer collection, these are similar community service concepts, among acquaintances, friends to help sell some products, to do CTOC community platform. At the end of 1999, JIm buckmaster started posting on Craigslist. In addition to selling second-hand goods, looking for a rental, Buckmaster also released his resume, and the first to call him to say that he wanted to recruit his people is Newmark. Jim buckmaster then became Craigslist's chief technology officer. 　　In 2000, their roles were formally transformed, and Jim became the chief executive of Craigslist, where he was in charge of various matters, while Craig became a customer service representative. "Craigslist's most important core is the authenticity of web-platform publishing information. Said Howard Rheingold, a famous new media research expert. So Craig makes it important to eliminate malicious ads, and the happiest thing about a customer service representative who works 10 hours a day is that his team can make a technical breakthrough in preventing, detecting, removing malicious ads, and false information. "Craig has fulfilled his duties and people have given him the respect he deserves," he said. "The success of Craigslist has also attracted the attention of traditional media, especially the local urban newspapers, which use classified ads as their main source of income." But Craig himself is very concerned about the development of the press, "I regret not to open up other ways of making money." "He has spent a lot of time blogging, and on his blog, he has always said he's particularly interested in funding journalists to do some in-depth stories," because a benign community needs such news. "From traditional media groups to the development of network media, are beginning to network advertising the latest way to expand, such as video ads, network coupons, such as the print download services." Al Boer told reporters: "The future of the Internet users will be the search engine as the default page, 42% people will choose the first search results to click and ignore the other, local sites in a community has a good influence, rather than the Big Mac type of news media." "I have no chance of becoming a good manager, but I am confident that I can be an excellent customer service representative." "The change of CEO role Craig Newmark is now a title that is neither Craigslist's president nor Craigslist's CEO, but an ordinary customer service person." His office, located in San Francisco's Suet neighborhood, is as introverted and subtle as his character, not so easily recognizable. The office is full of books and sundries, and he's not as youthful as the internet upstart in the media's image. The 53-Year-old has been bald, with IBM's stupid black computer, Nokia's old-fashioned mobile phone, just as he seems to have not sold his website in full swing now, he has no sense of wealth and the so-called taste. He doesn't want to be in the media.Publicity, and now any questions about the company's strategy and development are Jim Buckmaster answering questions from outside. 　　But before, whether or not he meant it, Craig has frequently appeared in front of authoritative media, such as the Associated Press, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. "I have no chance of becoming a good manager, but I am confident that I can be an excellent customer service representative." He was very attentive and earnest. He has been adhering to his own public welfare-oriented heart, the concept of community in his heart deep-rooted, he did not pursue fame, and even not too willing to run to the public, like every time he received an interview always appear to cherish the word as gold. 　　But his lectures at school, Stanford or Berkeley are always humorous and can cause bursts of applause. Jim Buckmaster is a communist who insists on social anarchism, and CEOs like this have a strong emphasis on the composition, structure and system of the company. He helped Craigslist out of the first step in the global expansion, from neighboring Canada to the Far East, mainland China, the Philippines, Lebanon and so on. 　　An English based platform that helps people in large cities in these countries find information about each other, from work to friends, from marriage to find someone to repair the computer, legal advice, from learning a second foreign language to second-hand trading, all-encompassing, there are interfaces like the Campus Network Forum, discuss various arts and humanities, social and economic, life and emotional topics. as Craigslist expands, more and more people are starting to post all kinds of information, including commercials, malicious deceptive information, which is a problem that all Web sites have to face. "I am no longer an engineer. Newmark said, "My most important job now is to clean up our website and help people solve all kinds of problems." "Now the information cleared by his hand is nearly 1500 a day. He worked with other customer service representatives to help maintain the authenticity and effectiveness of the information exchange that Craigslist has been insisting on. "The two of us are not the difference in division, but the transformation of roles." I'm not managing any company's business right now, I'm just a customer service rep because I think customer service is the most important part of Craigslist, and we're not a portal or a commercial website. "Everyone should respect the way they love to treat others, and unto, but also to impose." To do this, for Craigslist, it means customer service. "Most of our sites are free, and this requires the presence of trust, and the presence of trust needs to erase information that hurts trust." 　　"This is Craig's understanding of" unto, impose. ebay is a 25% shareholder for Craigslist, but since Craigslist is not a public company, there are few places to be held captive by shareholders. "We're not going to put any more ads, we don't have any other outreachFee way of intention and idea "so ebay's seller fee system will not be replicated on Craigslist. Craigslist's global expansion does not need to be bought and controlled by ebay. They are still a self-contained workshop. Everyone exists in their own way, Aette loves alcoholic beverages, is a dream to live in New York's Western Bay Area girl, Eric is the chief technology officer after Jim, but he is far away from modern life, not even TV buy, spare time love guitar and saxophone, Treasurer Mabel is the only person in this family group who has some kind of discipline, she likes to listen to Chinese songs and shopping in her spare time ... That's why 23 of people with totally different personalities, hobbies, specialties and backgrounds gather together, some of them graduated from prestigious schools like Berkeley, some of them quit early to start writing programs, some from Silicon Valley's best-known companies, some of whom used to be electronic musicians. 　　They use Craigslist's "community" spirit to work in this inner community, sincere and trusting. Craigslist was founded by founder Craig Newmark in 1995 in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, and entered Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing in April 2005 and recently entered Guangzhou, with four outlets in China, 　　are in English interface. The classified information covered on Craigslist includes job search, home leasing, second-hand product deals, housekeeping services, district activity guides, and search for romantic objects, only in New York, Los Angeles, Washington, Boston, Seattle, San Diego and San Francisco. All other classified information for users to provide spontaneous, not charge any fees. In August 2004, ebay bought an internal stake in Craigslist 25%.