craigslist.orgWent to a talk today at MIT by Craig of craigslist. (As a side note, Sergey of Google was sitting a few seats away, but I was a little slow to pick up on this, despite Craig calling on him by name when he asked a question.)

I really enjoyed hearing Craig talk about his original vision for craigslist that continues to drive the site today. Some of his points:

  • He recently realized he is a community organizer. In 1994 when he started craigslist it was about connecting people, mostly nerds, together so that they could get what they needed. For a long time he was an engineer. Now his title is customer service rep.
  • The experience of exchanging goods is social — people really enjoy doing it. Like flea markets and the Roman Forum, places where people come together to buy and sell are enjoyable places to be.
  • Craigslist is fast and simple. He’s not a designer but he knows how to make things fast and simple. He thinks the front page of craigslist is too cluttered today, but it is pretty simple in terms of figuring out what to do.
  • He doesn’t care to define “web 2.0″ (yay!!) and says that craigslist is web 0.1. He wasn’t interested in talking about “what’s next” for craigslist (people were asking about video, multimedia, blah, blah), because he is more interested in doing what is best for the community.

He kept returning to the point that the no-ads and no-selling-out isn’t because he is altruistic or charitable, but rather because of his nerd ethos. He believes that everyone in the world just wants to have things simple and easy and wants to be given a break once in a while. His original decision to not have banner ads in the 1990’s was because he thought banner ads were usually lame and distracting. He always goes with his gut instinct on how best to provide a service to his users and does not think of how best to make the most money, because he’s always made plenty of money.

He still uses pine for email. How awesome is that? I miss pine!

Since I’m now a super-fan, I’ll point you towards Craig’s blog, twitter feed, and interview on the Colbert Report.