There is no mistaking the current success of Craigslist with their extremely basic website design.
Craigslist.org (CL) was a simple online community classified site started in 1995 by Craig Newmark. The originally-non-profit site was incorporated in 1999. There are 190 versions of the website—localized by city—throughout the world, featuring free classified advertisements (jobs, housing, for sale, services, personals, gigs and community) and forums.
Although Jim Buckmaster was brought in as CEO in 2000, Craig has kept the titles of Founder, Chairman and Customer Service Representative. Having the company founder list “Customer Service Representative” among his titles would seem like a cheesy bit of PR, but in this case there is enough evidence to support the truth of the intent. Craig has kept his “service mission and non-corporate culture” values central to how he runs the company. For example:
- The site has a peace symbol favicon, and keeps a dot-org level domain as well as dot-com.
- Craig’s Blog talks about his personal views on Internet (and other) issues, not an excuse for CL PR.
- Users can comment on corporate decisions, and negative comments are not removed.
- Although as a private company CL could keep a lot quieter, the recent Fair Housing lawsuit (in Chicago) is publicly discussed on the site.
- CL accepts no banner advertising.
- CL runs a non-profit foundation.
- The About pages include words like: inclusive, giving a voice to the disenfranchised and humane, non-commercial environment.
In a website design review of Craigslist.org, Terri Edmonston did the following research and made some determinations about the current success of Craigslist.
This touchy-feely community site has had some serious business success. Craigslist has more than 10 million users and eight million classified ads each month. While there are no public revenue numbers, given the simple business model, we can make a reasonable estimate. The site accepts paid listings for job postings from NY and LA ($25), and SF ($75). With about 1000 listings per workday, multiplying out for 260 workdays per year, revenues for 2006 should be at least $33 million.
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The Market: Forrester predicts the online classifieds market will be $4.7 billion by 2010. In 2004, eBay bought 25 percent of CL shares from an ex-employee—resulting in loud screams from many users. While no changes have been made yet, the stakes are getting higher. Microsoft has just launched some direct competition—Windows Live Expo, with a lot more bells and whistles, while Google Base is in beta, and other big players are also expected to be playing in the classifieds space soon.
The above paints a picture of a very interesting website design stand-off coming in the next few years. CL has a no-nonsense, bare-bones design that matches their non-corporate values. The new entrants will undoubtedly throw in all the Web jangles that bloat development and marketing budgets. Which design model will win out with the users is still up for grabs, but there is no mistaking the current success of Craigslist with their extremely basic website design.
