Craigslist blog is live and makes an interesting read

Posted on April 3, 2008
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If you have been an Internet user for even a small period of time then you know that there are a few web sites where most of e-commerce takes place. These are, of course, Amazon, eBay, and Craigslist. Interestingly, the latter is the only one that has a simple text-based web site and no advertising displayed on any of their pages. They also don’t seem to be tracking what their users are buying and selling and as a result they do not use such behavioral data to force products on people.

You might think that because Craigslist is such a simple web site that you won’t be able to find anything good there as compared to all the products available on eBay for example. This, of course, is not true and you can find job about anything on Craigslist including jobs, clothing, personals, gadgets (from iPods to used cisco equipment,) freebies, cars, etc. The truth is that I sold my car within 12 hours of posting a for-sale ad on Craigslist; I received more than 15 calls about the car within 2 hours of making the post.

Craigslist has now lunched an official blog. They cover a variety of topics that have to do with e-commerce and the company. The truth is that Craigslist has often had to defend themselves against idiot politicians and other attention seeking individuals. For example, the Connecticut Attorney General, Richard Blumenthal, recently said to the media that he considers the erotic services section of Craigslist are a method for the company to profit from prostitution. Craigslist has responded to these accusations on their official blog calling Blumenthal out for defamation. The company claims that they are taking large steps to prevent the web site from being abused in such ways.

As they explain on the April 2nd entry,

We welcome feedback from any and all interested parties as to how we can improve, but Craigslist will not be used as a punching bag for false and defamatory statements.
Unlike the telephone yellow pages, many newspapers, and countless websites, which for many years have profited from “erotic service” ads, Craigslist derives no revenue (let alone profit) from “erotic services”, and in fact we incur significant costs in enforcing our terms of use regarding these ads.

What will come out of this is nothing more than the Attorney General trying to get some attention from the media in order to further his political career. Craigslist will be around serving users with a no no-sense web site for many years to come.

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