Today, Craigslist is one of the most well known of all online urban communities on the web. It allows people to place free classified adverts relating to various subjects, as well as having forums where people can discuss various topics.
Craigslist was founded by Craig Newmark from the San Francisco Bay Area in 1995. Then it became incorporated in 1999. Since its incorporation as of November 2006, there were over 450 cities where a Craigslist has been established.
The business now operates with a team of 24 people, and the only way they make any revenue today is through the job adverts paid for in selected cities around the States. Ads placed by companies in the San Francisco Bay Area cost $75, while those placed by companies or businesses in New York, Los Angeles, San Diego, Boston, Seattle and Washington DC will cost them $25 for each advert placed. Also today, a real estate broker will need to pay $10 for any apartment listings they place on Craigslist for New York.
Today, this site is receiving over 500,000 new job listings each month, and so makes it one of the top job boards in the world today. The classified adverts that are placed on this site range from more traditional ones where people are able to buy and sell goods, to community announcements...even personal adverts or erotic services are being provided through this site.
In its early years, most of the postings placed on the Craigslist were submitted by its founder, and were generally dealing with social events that were of interest to software and internet developers who lived and worked in the San Francisco area.
However, as more and more people learned about this site, it began to grow at an extremely high rate. Certainly, as more and more subscribers began to use
the site, so the number of postings to it also began to grow as well.
Certainly those people who were looking to fill technical positions found this list to be a great way of reaching those with the necessary skills that they were searching for. Because of this, the demand for a section dedicated to jobs was created. Plus, the demand by the lists’ users for more categories to be able to post and search under also began to grow as well. It was at this time that more and more of the sites users asked for a web interface to be set up.
It was through the help of various volunteers and contractors that such a website user interface was created for each different mailing list category to be found on the list. As the domain required a name, Craig Newman first registered “craigslist.org” and then followed it up later on with “craigslist.com”, which helped to prevent the name from being used for some other purpose.
