Mental Floss

Craigslist by the Numbers: 10 You Need to Know

By David K. Israel

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95

Craigslist started as a tech mailing list in 1995, which quickly morphed into a place where tech recruiters posted job listings. Christina Murphy was a frequent job poster/head hunter on Craigslist.

98 Murphy teemed up with Nancy Melone, an Internet consultant, and together they roped Newmark into starting a nonprofit called List Foundation in 1998. In fact, Craiglist.org was originally available at ListFoundation.org.

2

Melone had big plans, as the dot.com bubble bubbled and bubbled and bubbled. Newmark, on the other hand, who has never been interested in the trappings of capitalism, begged off, and the two split. If you logged into ListFoundation.org, you were suddenly now redirected to a for-profit called MetroVox.

1 Ever hear of MetroVox? Didn't think so. They went the way of most dot.coms around 2001, and Craigslist? Well, the rest is just Listory isn't it.

25

Craigslist is the 25th most popular Web site in the world, according to Alexa.com.

$10 Billion the amount of revenue lost in newspaper classified ads over the last decade, due in part to Craigslist.

30

the amount of employees at Craigslist (by comparison, Amazon, ranked 29 on Alexa, has more than 20,000 employees.

195,000 the amount of e-mail messages Newmark received in 2008. He's an avid e-mail responder, and replies to many of those. For example, I've written him twice, and he's written me back both times.

12"

the difference between Newmark, who is 5'7" and Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster, who is 6'7". Cool Buckmaster factoid: He was hired by Newmark after posting his resume on Craigslist in 1999.

0 number of meetings at Craigslist each day. With no business development, no HR, and no sales, who needs meetings?

[Numbers inspired, in part, by a recent WIRED cover story on Craigslist.]