In a creative frenzy (?) to build what is inarguably an ass kicking machine, this craigslist user may have cut a few corners and forgotten to do a full patent search.
On the other hand, he does mention having 10 years experience, and patent #6,293,874 was not filed until january 2000, so perhaps there is applicable prior art.
Come to think of it, weren’t there some stooges back in the 30s working on something similar?
Comscore has released search rankings for March, listing craigslist as the #8 search company overall in terms of search volume, with the highest year-over-year growth rate in searches:
| Company | Feb 08 (MM) | Mar 08 (MM) | YOYgrowth |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Sites | 7,390 | 8,267 | 12% |
| Yahoo! Sites | 2,262 | 2,391 | 6% |
| Microsoft Sites | 984 | 1,054 | 7% |
| AOL LLC | 864 | 891 | 3% |
| Ask Network | 452 | 506 | 12% |
| Ebay | 480 | 474 | -1% |
| Fox Interactive | 337 | 377 | 12% |
| craigslist | 239 | 277 | 16% |
Presumably the hay bales in background serve as biofuel
Presumably the hay bales in background serve as biofuel
I’m getting some well-deserved flak for a ham-handed cease-and-desist email I sent to a blogger recently. The dialogue had remained cordial until he revealed his business model – running deceptive textads such as the ones below, which got on my nerves:
He pulled the ads before sharing his story (and my emails) with the press, but not before we’d taken some screenshots. When it comes to following up with Ebay, Livedeal, TableForSix, I should probably leave the C&Ds to the professionals.
Fwiw, we have no interest in shutting down blogs about craigslist, critical or otherwise, and have never tried to do so. But in the strange world of trademarks and copyright, it’s poor practice to allow a confusingly similar domain or business name to go unchallenged. Given all the inquiries we’d gotten from reporters thinking this blogger was associated with craigslist, taken together with the deceptive textads and disrespect for our trademark and terms of use, we felt we had to act.
But there was no need for me to act like a jerk, provoked or not.
The Connecticut Attorney General, Richard Blumenthal, recently denounced craigslist to members of the media, for what he alleged were shortcomings in the “erotic services” section of craigslist for areas of Connecticut.
We were disappointed that he chose to ignore our recent progress in dramatically improving compliance with our terms of use, shocked at the bizarre assertion that we are “stonewalling”, and frankly stunned to hear craigslist recklessly slandered as “profiting from prostitution“.
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.
Connecticut craigslist users are no doubt curious as to why their AG is spending time attacking freedom of speech and law-abiding companies that provide much-needed free services to the people of Connecticut, when there is so much actual crime left unaddressed. We don’t have the answer, but would be interested to know what it is.
Serving 10 billion page views on a few hundred servers, craigslist leads the internet industry by orders of magnitude when it comes to efficient use of electricity. The last time I checked we were clocking something like 175,000 page views per kilowatt-hour.
Compare this to single digit thousands of pages-per-kwhr for most large sites, which typically run tens to hundreds of thousands of servers.
Have said it before, and will say it again: pound-for-pound our tech team is the best in the business.
Apparently I’m not the only one who thinks so, judging by the fruitless attempts other internet companies (who will remain nameless for now) have made to pluck them away.
In early March we implemented a phone verification system for our “erotic services” category, which taken together with other measures has reduced the volume of ads in this category by 80%, and more importantly has signficantly improved compliance with our terms of use and other posted guidelines.
For example, here is a graph of the daily volume of “erotic services” ads submitted to the Hartford, Connecticut site:
Idealistic techies with strong LAMP credentials are encouraged to apply:
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/eng/622126302.html
Interesting projects, market rates, excellent benefits, and laid-back SF digs await you.
In addition to spanish, support for french, german, italian, and portugese has been added, some example sites are linked below:
http://berlin.de.craigslist.org/
http://paris.fr.craigslist.org/
http://montreal.fr.craigslist.ca/
http://zurich.de.craigslist.ch/
We plan to add additional languages before long, and requests for particular languages are welcome in our feedback forum
craigslist blog 