History and Timeline of Craigslist Online Classifieds
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Loading ...Even before free classified ads became popular online, Craig Newmark was already starting what would become the world’s largest online classifieds community in 1995. Craigslist started out as Craig’s own email list for friends in San Francisco, where he moved for a job with Charles Schwab. This simple hobby involving online personal ads among pals grew into a veritable business spanning countries and millions of people. How exactly did a former IBM employee grow a straightforward, uncomplicated mailing list into a worldwide phenomenon–through foresight and hard work, as shown through this timeline.
1995-1998. Craig Newmark starts an online distribution system, wherein he emails friends regularly about events on art as well as software and Internet development in the San Francisco Bay area. Craigslist isn’t online nor is a website yet at this point and not being used for posting personal ads yet. Craig decides to put Craigslist online in 1996 and it becomes a simple, web-based service. By 1997, Craigslist starts getting up to a million views per month and Craig starts accepting volunteers to help him manage Craigslist.
1999. Craig decides to make Craigslist into a private-for-profit company. He also improves Craigslist by drawing from his experience as a programmer. He starts the first Craigslist website in the Perl language. It is also in this year that present CEO of Craigslist, Jim Buckmaster, joins Craigslist as a programmer and helps expand Craigslist to other cities. People also start using Craigslist to post online classifieds for jobs while some start posting personal ads. Craig stays vehement about his non-acceptance of pop-up ads and banner ads on his site.
2000. Jim Buckmaster is named CEO of Craigslist and the website expands its services to a total of nine cities (including New York and Los Angeles) in the U.S. By this time, Craigslist is so popular because of its free classified ads and personal ads that Craig decides to resign from his job as a software engineer and work fulltime on his growing website.
2003. Craigslist remains free for anyone who wants to post online classifieds—from those selling exercise mats to those looking for available jobs in the U.S. Personal ads has become the number one attraction in Craigslist, with humorous ads posted alongside those more sexual in nature. Craigslist also expands beyond the U.S. to include Canada and 12 cities in the U.K.
2004. Visitors of Craigslist grow to 5.3 million a month and the website becomes one of the Internet’s Top 20 portals. Because of Craigslist’s popularity and the massive number of free classified ads and personal ads posted on the site a month, Ebay buys a 25% stake in Craigslist from a former employee of the site. The site also starts charging 25$ per job opening post from Los Angeles and New York areas.
2005. Craigslist won a bid to beam 2 million classifieds into space. Americans turn to Craigslist to offer relief, shelter and comfort to victims of Hurricane Katrina.
2006 – 2007. Craigslist continues to be the Internet giant of personal ads and free classified ads. Its popularity remains strong even after several social networking sites is put up and even in the light of Microsoft’s launch of Window’s Live Expo and Ebay’s launch of Kijiji. These sites are put up to compete with Craigslist.
2008. Ebay files a lawsuit against Craigslist, claiming that Craig Newman and Jim Buckmaster tried to dilute its 25% stake in the company. Craigslist files a countersuit against Ebay saying that the site was guilty of false advertising and trademark infringement.
2009. Craigslist decides to take out personal ads that are sexual in nature after a Boston University student is charged with the murder of Julissa Brissman, a masseuse he met in the erotic section of Craigslist. The 14-year old online classifieds site removes its erotic section and starts screening all adult personal ads manually.
Craigslist has indeed gone a very long way from its humble beginnings as a simple email list from a hardworking programmer named Craig Newmark. And despite its no-ads rule and simple and no-frills layout, it has remained to be one of the most popular online classifieds in the world.
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