Craigslist

Submission 17,988

About

Craigslist is an online classified advertisement website dedicated to jobs for wanted and seeking, housing for sale and rent, and personals. Since its inception in 1995, the site become one of the top web-based services in the world, spanning over 50 countries .

History

The site was founded by University graduate and entrepreneur Craig Newmark^[1] in early 1995. It started off as an email distributor of local events in the San Francisco bay area. Soon, word of mouth began to spread about the distributor and an online community began to form. So in 1996, Newmark register the domain "craiglist.org" and its became live as an online site, featuring a wide range of classified categories.

Since its launch, the site has managed to provide service, spreading out across the United States, and as of October 2012, it is currently providing service across 50 countries, being one of the largest classified site in its medium.

Personals Section Shutdown

On March 22nd, 2018, Craigslist announced that they would be removing their entire personals section after the passing of the Stop Enabling Sex Traffckers Act. ^[8] The company made the announcement, saying they could not jeopardize their other services (shown below).

Many Twitter users reacted to the news with frustration and anger. Twitter user @kittystryker argued that the precedent it set would not only be detrimental to the safety of sex workers but also those seeking any non-heterosexual sort of relationship, as online dating services are essential parts of those communities (shown below, left). Twitter user @Nikki_Irish argued that those who don't care about Craigslist Personals being shut down will care much more when popular online dating apps such as Tinder and Grindr are next (shown below, right).

Features

The site can allow anyone to browse through a wide range of ads straight off the front page, which lists the province of all 50 U.S states, Canada, Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia. A registered account can allow users to set up or reply to an ad within or outside their area. A discussion forum has also been set up in each regional area of the site, which allows users to discuss topics such as adoption, fitness, and philosophy.

Traffic

According to Quantcast^[2], Craigslist is currently ranked number 23, on Alexa^[3], ranked number 8 in the United States, and number 36 in Global rankings. And on compete^[4], Craigslist is ranked number 17, as of October 2012.

Online Presence

Due to being one of the top sites on the internet, it has managed to garnered attention upon itself. On Reddit, multiple subreddits^[6] for Craigslist were created, with the earliest being the /r/craiglist^[7] subreddit, which was set up on January 2008. On Twitter, the official @craigslist^[5] account was created on April of 2009, and has since gained 6,000 followers, as of October 2012.