August 13, 2004
eBay aquires 25% of Craigslist
One of the greatest (and quietest) successes on the internet, Craigslist is now 25% owned by eBay. Craigslist was founded by Craig Newmark, and has been a fixture of the Bay Area for almost a decade and has now spread out to cities world-wide. [story spotted on kottke.org].
The site has been a huge success, and has been recently credited with being one of the reasons for the restructuring of the Village Voice. Is this a smart move by Craig & co. or will Craigslist become another spoke in the empire with half.com, PayPal et al. On his blog Newmark says "The deal we're announcing today basically allows us to operate without changing our mission of community service, while making available to us expertise and resources we could really use." Well, do Craigslisters, for one, welcome their new eBay overlords? Or do folks think things willcontinue apace with little or no change?
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Craigslist got me paid, got me laid, got me my apartment, sold half of what I owned and found me a cheap tv. I can't imagine that some of the shadier shit that runs on the Craigs DL is gonna be left unchecked. Some moderation is more likely to creep in now and maybe some site redesign? It's long overdue. Nice post, btw.
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25% is a good foothold, but the majority are still the majority. It'll be interesting to see if any of the other owners sells their share in light of this, though.
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Quiet success is right - I had no idea what Craigslist was a few months ago, and just showed another friend what it was when this post came up. It just reminds you again how huge the internet is, and even if you surf for years, you might never go down the same paths as someone else. Now that I know what it is, I will keep more of an eye on it - though it's not so useful to people outside major metropolitan areas. (I also never knew what boingboing was until someone on mefi posted (to someone else) "everyone reads boingboing". The funny thing is that I think I went to same highschool as one of the people behind it.)