Craigslist, A Recent Online Empire
The New eBay, Job Search Website, and Place for Personals
May 14, 2009
Craigslist was created in 1995 by Craig Newmark, and at first it was a localized online service website that served only the San Francisco Bay area, Newmark revealed of his site's history to Timothy O'Brien in an interview in 2008. Over the next decade, the website spread to several new cities, but since 2005, the site has been made available and popularized in nearly 600 cities throughout 50 countries, and it is quickly replacing websites that offer specific services, and the classified sections in local newspapers of cities worldwide.
What is Craigslist
Craigslist is an online network that allows people to post classified ads for free, such as personals, services, housing (both for real estate companies, and for individuals looking to fill, or rent a room), items for sale, gigs, events in the community, discussion forums, resumes (or places for people to list their positive attributes and qualifications in a particular genre, should employers be looking on the site), and help wanted ads.
How Craigslist Operates
Everything is completely free for posters, with the exception of help wanted postings in select cities, which range from $25-$75, and charging for those advertisements is how craigslist maintains itself. There are no commercial advertisements posted along the sides of the page, as there are on the sites of many online news sources. But considering that craigslist has taken over the "help wanted" industry, beating out many of the websites that exist only to hook employers up with their potential workers, and that craigslist.org is the first place that people tend to look for jobs in the United States, charging the residents of a few major cities to post ads in the help wanted section proves to be a successful and reliable source of income for the site.
Services of the Website
Craigslist.org offers much more than job postings, however. The "for sale" section is usually loaded with posts, acting as a sort of online yard sale, as people who want to get rid of certain items are often quickly linked with buyers, if their price is right. The discussion posts allow people to comment on various aspects of life, and it serves as a sort of interpersonal communication. The website has a section for dating ads, and other personals, including "casual encounter" advertisements, which should not be viewed by children.
Specific Categories for Classified Advertisements
All of the categories that craigslist allow people to post in are subdivided into more specific categories, which make it easier for the site's many users. For instance, under the job posts, there are various categories that potential employees may browse, such as construction and labor jobs, accounting and finance jobs, real estate job openings, and many more, which makes it easy for viewers to search for employment opportunities in their specific fields. The other categories, such as the for sale section are also subdivided in this way, and people in the for sale section may specifically browse what cars are for sale, what boats people are advertising, what musical instruments, and what other specific items are for sale.
All in all, Craigslist.org is a valuable community tool that allows browsers to locate the people who are advertising the services that the browsers want. And it does not only do this in one specific field, such as jobs, or personals, or housing, but the website offers tabs for all of these categories, and many more as well.
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