Webomatica - Latest Comments in In Defense Of Craigslist: Humility, And Everyone is Lucky

Re: In Defense Of Craigslist: Humility, And Everyone is Lucky

Tony Hung — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 21:05:41 -0000

Well, I guess we'll have to politely agree to disagree (or agree?). It takes a lot of balls to leave a whole whack of cash on the metaphorical table, "just because" -- and I think that, as your link eloquently describes, there is almost something ethically wrong with doing so if you have a tremendous potential for Good.

And for what? A few tastefully placed links?

Cheers
tony.

Re: In Defense Of Craigslist: Humility, And Everyone is Lucky

webomatica — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 20:56:48 -0000

I'm thinking there be something more to Craig Newmark's reluctance to monetize Craigslist than just laziness - perhaps some philosophy or creed he came up with in the early days.

Still, I don't think you're alone - here's another post from late last year that wonders why Craig doesn't put some ads on there.

Maybe one way to monetize and still keep in good faith with the community is to donate a large portion of that money to charity or something, ala Paul Newman's spaghetti sauce.

Re: In Defense Of Craigslist: Humility, And Everyone is Lucky

Tony Hung — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 20:50:45 -0000

To remain staunchly anti-commercial and not sell out when people are handing you cash - well, I see that as fortitude, not laziness or even stupidity. Craigslist remains focused on purpose, determination, and not fixing what isnâ€™t broken.

Not maximizing efficiencies is what seems lazy to me -- and surely adding a few ads here and there in a tasteful way would not seem unreasonable, even for the Craigslist community. Its one thing to plaster pop ups and flashing ads for spyware software, and its another to add in a few unobtrusive text link ads or even Adwords.

Furthermore, who knows how much good all that extra wasted and unrealized capital could do? Sure, I know that what they do is their business, but actively deciding *not* to do anything about all that inefficiency doesn't seem smart.

It seems lazy.

As for your other analogies about luck's role in other ventures -- you're right in some respects, and I think that all successful ventures have a strong dash of luck to them.

On the other hand, once the ball got rolling, well, classifieds is something that runs its self. Where are the smarts in getting out of the way of a successfully running operation?

As for your thoughts on outlasting all the other Web2/3.o concerns, that makes sense. On the other hand, I have a hard time seeing how a purely classified's company *wouldn't* have a hard time outlasting all others. Put another way, I would expect *all* classified companies -- like blogs -- to do just fine in a downturn, because their overhead is low. Asked about the same issue (by me, at Mesh), Mike Arrington gave the same commentary. He's going to do just fine because it costs almost nothing to run TC.

Anyway, it looks like I *am* the only who thinks that Craigslist is a product of luck than anything else.

Thanks for contributing to the conversation ... ;)

t @ dji