Paul Gillin's Blog - Social Media and the Open Enterprise
Thursday, December 07, 2006
  Craigslist: Business success without a profit motive

Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster spoke to Wall Street analysts this week, stunning them with his lack of interest in maximizing profits or revenue. Two years ago, a study estimated that Craigslist is costing Bay Area newspapers $50 million annually in lost revenue. Today, the site is far more influential. And it doesn't care about profits. How do you compete with that?
 
Comments:
To beat Craigslist?

Value added services, better sales model, more dependable service and better direct salespeople for starters.

Better philanthropic supporters. See Bono from U2 supporting the Red cause etc. Get someone with a better name draw to go up against them.

I have about 20 other ideas but thats enough for now.
 
Fair enough. That's a Neiman Marcus response: high value-add customer service. It works in retailing. I question whether it'll work in classified advertising.
 
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Name: Paul Gillin
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Paul is a writer and media consultant specializing in information technology topics.

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