What is Craigslist?

An online community is a group of people that usually interact with each other through online networks. These communities interact through the internet on social, professional, educational and many varied topics. One such community in New York is the Craigslist and New York.

This popular and successful centralized network of online communities was founded in 1995 by Craig Newmark featuring free classified advertisements and forums. This service which was initially started for the San Francisco Bay Area soon spread to 9 other cities after it was registered as a profit for company in 1999.

Usually communities like Craig list and New York grow slowly depending on the size of the members and their contribution. The Craigslist grew within in the next 3 years and the network expanded to 22 cities and by the end of 2007 it had reached to 50 countries around the world with more than 450 cities in its network.

Craigslist is 9th among the websites in United States and is placed 56th in the world with over 9 billion page views per month serving various visitors. With just 24 staff their only source of income are the paid job advertisements and apartment listings placed in certain cities.

Craigslist and New York receives over 30 million classifieds advertisements each month and this makes it a leading classified service network. The categories of the advertisements range from personal advertisements and announcements to job listings, buying and selling, to varied other subjects. What makes the Craigslist one of the leading job boards is that it receives around 2 million job listings.

The online community networks are great knowledge and information providers. Craig Newmark also wanted to create something where people would contribute and help each other through the Internet community in social, professional and friendly manner. In early 1995 Craig made postings of local San Francisco events.

The postings and contributions grew in number with an increase of subscribers which became popular by word of mouth. The list of categories grew with the demand of the users. "Jobs" category was created when it was found that employers used the listing which provided technically skilled candidates to them.

Seeking the help of volunteers and developers a web interface was created for different mailing list categories. Craigslist.org was the domain name registered then to avoid misuse of the name Craigslist it was registered as craigslist.com. As the network grew in proportion, Craig Newmark decided to run the listing full time and gave up his job as a software engineer. By the year 2000 it had 9 staff members.

Most often the members may not know each other in real life and this listing provides privacy and trust. According to Newmark these features are the ones that make the listing so popular. It is well established and its popularity is because it is consistent in its customer service and simplicity. Craigslist also does not promote or support individual organizations but is a non profit organization working towards providing resources, online information and supporting the society as a whole.

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