Craigslist ....... Business Guru or just plain lucky
 

interesting articles about craigslist and the founder

How Craig Newmark Built Craigslist With "No Vision Whatsoever"
http://blog.wired.com/business/2007/...ion_whats.html

http://www.internetfinancialnews.com...dlikeafox.html

quotes
.was essentially just in the right place at the right time and lucked into what has become one of the most successful online communities around - one that could be worth as much as $500-million, depending on how you measure such things.

As Tony describes it, "Craig Newmark is no visionary. He's no guru. And he's no soothsayer. He's a guy who lucked into his business, and it continues to succeed in spite of his lackadaisical efforts at starting it and running it." Because he was early, he gained a "first mover" advantage, Tony argues, and therefore developed network effects that now make the site virtually unassailable. But what really seems to tick Tony off - as it does most of Wall Street, I'm sure - is craigslist's determination not to monetize itself:

"Not wanting to take advantage of an enormous opportunity to create an efficient business and maximize revenue - especially to do more Good well, that doesn't strike me as being wise. It just strikes me as being lazy."


what do you think business savvy or just fuckin lucky

Right place in the right time - he was the first.

It's still a crappy website and hasn't really changed in years. However, it works. I've sold tons of stuff off of Craig's List.

It's so simple it's genius. You can never discount the power of being early in the market.

how does he make money from it?

yeah i sold and bought alot of things on there :winkwink:

Yeah seriously where does the revenue come from or at least the operating bottom line costs?

imagine how much he would make with a few Adsense ads on there :1orglaugh:1orglaugh

imagine how much he would make if he sold it; insta-billionaire.

instant billionaire or something really close to it .....

simple works.

Thats Googles claim to fame. When Yahoo was 'the shit' and had every feature and its mother on its homepage and 'search' became a benched player, Google stepped in with relevant and decent search results without the FILLER.

Even tho Google expanded and has a million features and is a huge empire now, their homepage for the most part stays true to the humble beginnings. Craigslist has not steered from its humble beginnings and has not tried to be everything it was originally ... not.

WIth that I say............. MYSPACE will suffer the same demise as Yahoo, it will get eclipsed by something new that keeps to its succesful roots and doesnt add everything under the sun to keep peeps interested.

(IMO.)

and since im on a drunken tangent ... i will add...

the simple formula ive seen for success on said internet is, do something better, do something already out there, but that doesnt SUCK. SUre you can go re-invent the wheel and come out with some crazy never seen before shit, but the laddewr you climb is that much higher. If you see something that works and can do it 10x better, GO for it.

And if it brings success, stick with that. If it aint broke... dont fix it.

agreed

yahoo is a pain in the ass to use because of all the BS on there

and facebook is moving up as myspace's replacement

Combination of things....Right place, right time, luck and some business decisions....

yeah i was thinking that too ...