Craiglist - the Internet Superhero

Who would have known that one man could start something online for free, and end up with a 150 billion dollar revenue earning venture on the internet, and become the role model for even other veterans who were already in the field? Everyone is now aware of the website Craigslist.com. But not many people realize where or from what this innovation came from. Let us spin the wheels of time backward to look at how craigslist.com came into existence.

The founder Craig Newmark was a relatively new person in the area of San Francisco during the year 1995. During this time, many people had slowly started using the Internet as a business place. The concept of online sales had just begun. Craig observed people being friendly to each other and helping each other a lot on the internet. He noticed that people, who would not stop a minute to give directions to some stranger on the road, spent a lot of time typing out stuff on the internet to make sure they were able to help others.

Craig himself was pleasantly amused and liked the idea. So he started out by creating a mailing list to inform and gather information about the local events that used to take place in the San Francisco Bay Area. And that was where Craigslist.com was born. Within a short time, Craigslist.com had become an online classifieds portal serving the entire area of San Francisco and it was widely being appreciated for its uniqueness.

Soon it started developing to the other cities and states and people were hooked on to it. People were also cautious and wary as they had no idea whether the person on the other end is genuine or not. The sad part which we have to make note of here, is that even today no one knows whether the other person is genuine or not, even though there are very strict laws for internet fraud and such things. Craigslist.com worked so well that soon Craig Newmark had to give up his day to day job and settle full time in maintaining Craigslist.com.

It must be noted that this decision on Craig's part was based on seeing the sense of intimacy and humanity that people showed on the internet to strangers. Other reasons why he believes the website became a hit for are simplicity, ease of use and the vast user base. It is even better than the real world, where we may drive down different areas of the town looking for a job or an antique mirror item and we still may not find it. But on a website, it can be done in just a matter of seconds.

Craigslist.com had a unique design which is now being adopted all over the world and now there are different websites in different countries which do the same. Sulekha.com was one such website which was started in India based on this model and now it is expanding all over the world. Leave it to the Indians to take one small bit of innovation and build up a fortress on top of that.

The most important thing about the story of Craigslist.com though is the fact that humanity and the sense of mutual love still exists in this world which is too fast for the common man to even think about. The internet was just an extension of the human minds.