Live data from Hacker News

How Craigslist Makes Money

forbes.com

131–140 of 246 posts

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#131

I often wish Facebook would have followed that approach. They made money very early with small ads on a lots of page views, did not need investors. But they went into the VC religion of revenue growth, took their money, then Wall Street money, and they cannot go back now because all employees and stockholders have been promised more. So more ads, more snooping on users, more worldwide control, we need to feed the bea…

>more snooping on users

It's Zuckerberg, that would have happened regardless.

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#132
I found it useful that they could use spam as a signal for what to monetize. When doing Blekko (search engine) we noticed that spam was a solid indicator of the search categories that made the most money.

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#133

Craiglist, because of its age, is interestingly built on Perl[1] and four years ago brought on Perl's founder, Larry Wall.[2] [1] https://www.craigslist.org/about/thanks (CL tech stack) [2] http://blog.craigslist.org/2013/10/15/artist-formerly-known/

Craigslist are so quiet about their tech; I'm surprised there's even that much. I'd love to hear their opinions on operating some of those things at scale, given that their problems are likely much more like those of the average CRUD-y SaaS business (scaled up) than they are like those of e.g. Twitter or Facebook, who have to care about things like "realtime demand-based geographic read-only partial replication of event streams."

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#134
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugh, I know! I hate it when broke people have opinions.

Obviously my comment was not about not liking broke people having opinions. It was about not liking broke "wannabe startup billionaires" sneering on people with lifestyle businesses as if they somehow "failed".

Nonetheless, you are understanding of the sneering of the folks who are rich enough.

Sneering is a bad habit no matter your income level. Justifying it for the rich while dismissing it for people who are broke remains an expression of classism, no matter how much you try to clarify your intent.

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#135
post #134
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously my comment was not about not liking broke people having opinions. It was about not liking broke "wannabe startup billionaires" sneering on people with lifestyle businesses as if they somehow "failed".

Nonetheless, you are understanding of the sneering of the folks who are rich enough. Sneering is a bad habit no matter your income level. Justifying it for the rich while dismissing it for people who are broke remains an expression of classism, no matter how much you try to clarify your intent.

S/he wasn't justifying sneering for the rich, they were saying they understood sneering at lifestyle businesses in the case of people who succeeded at building unicorn startups.

It's not about money or class, it's about success in a particular field and judgement of that particular field.

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#136
post #135
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonetheless, you are understanding of the sneering of the folks who are rich enough. Sneering is a bad habit no matter your income level. Justifying it for the rich while dismissing it for people who are broke remains an expression of classism, no matter how much you try to clarify your intent.

S/he wasn't justifying sneering for the rich, they were saying they understood sneering at lifestyle businesses in the case of people who succeeded at building unicorn startups. It's not about money or class, it's about success in a particular field and judgement of that particular field.

Sure. That's why they specified ...some startup multi-millionaire/billionaire ... Because money is not relevant to their point.

/s

Also, I hate the term "lifestyle business" because:

http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2014/03/i-love-lucy-...

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#137
> At 64, Newmark has long said that he is not involved in management decisions at Craigslist, though he still continues to do customer service.

I'm kind of curious what this means at a 50-person company. Is he still handling routine support tickets just for the love of it?

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine you have heard of the Mr Money Mustache and his wife who became financially independent at age ~30 with both of them just working regular tech jobs. You should check out his blog[1] if you haven't. His philosophy is low spending while still having "kick-ass life". Offspring, travel, great food, etc. They own their house and spend about $25,000 per year. [1] http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/

> They own their house and spend about $25,000 per year In the Bay Area, this is a multi-million-dollar ordeal in itself :-(

I get that the Bay Area is nice, but a lot of expensive housing is expensive because of its proximity to high-paying jobs. If you don't need one of those, you can live more cheaply.

(Unfortunately, proximity to smart, creative people also seems to correlate with housing costs. I wonder what US cities have the best "proximity to interesting people to living expense" ratio?)

I think Mr. Money Mustache lives in some Colorado suburb, and he was able to buy a nicer house for less money specifically because it's not in the immediate vicinity of a major economic hub.

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine you have heard of the Mr Money Mustache and his wife who became financially independent at age ~30 with both of them just working regular tech jobs. You should check out his blog[1] if you haven't. His philosophy is low spending while still having "kick-ass life". Offspring, travel, great food, etc. They own their house and spend about $25,000 per year. [1] http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/

> They own their house and spend about $25,000 per year In the Bay Area, this is a multi-million-dollar ordeal in itself :-(

[deleted]

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#140

> At 64, Newmark has long said that he is not involved in management decisions at Craigslist, though he still continues to do customer service. I'm kind of curious what this means at a 50-person company. Is he still handling routine support tickets just for the love of it?

> Is he still handling routine support tickets just for the love of it?

I've always understood that this is PRECISELY what he is doing. I hope it's true.

Post reply on HN