I'm Joining Craigslist in July (by Jeremy Zawodny)

http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/010361.html

by ajbatac • 18 years ago

50 24 18 years ago

jeremy.zawodny.com

prakash2• 18 years ago

Curious to know if Craigslist still hands out equity to employees?

jonknee• 18 years ago

Probably not after the whole eBay fiasco.

prakash2• 18 years ago

Which is why I wanted to find out for sure.

neilc• 18 years ago

No equity at all? I doubt that. The eBay fiasco arose because one employee had ~28% equity in the company, which is far, far more than an engineer joining at this stage could reasonably expect to receive.

npk• 18 years ago

Question: Do they have any intention of going public? If not, then what's the point of equity? Profit Sharing?

fallentimes• 18 years ago

Right - profit sharing. Unless they are trying to build a cash hoard for an acquisition (doubtful) or buy out Ebay (somewhat more likely).

adrianwaj2• 18 years ago

Relaxing read, not a heck of a lot insight though. I guess the blog kicker means what it says "Some random bits scribbled"

jzawodn2• 18 years ago

Sorry it wasn't more insightful. Maybe after I've been there a few weeks I'll have more interesting things to say...

mrkurt• 18 years ago

You needed to incorporate aviation into it somehow. I think that would have sold everyone. ;)

adrianwaj2• 18 years ago

Some more thoughts about what would have happened had the Microsoft deal gone through.

supahfly_remix• 18 years ago

I Farted and Would Like Everyone to Sniff It (by Jeremy Zawodny)

a15• 18 years ago

No kidding -- he's a perl scripter and knows some mysql. Did he start a company? Why do people care?

nunu• 18 years ago

We could all learn lessons in self-promotion from the blogosphere elite!

ardit33• 18 years ago

Do yourself and us a favor, and go back to reddit.

xlnt• 18 years ago

He didn't self-submit, he just posted to his personal blog, so why are you complaining?

edit: can one of the downmodders please explain where i'm going wrong? the blog author may have farted (no comment), but he did not do anything to make others sniff it.

stcredzero3• 18 years ago

Craigslist should go into micropayments. Requiring a micropayment of a few cents for posting an ad could completely shut down spammers.

breck• 18 years ago

For the sake of debate, I'll challenge this. As long as money is made by spamming the site, even a micropayment wouldn't completely eradicate spam. Profits from spamming would decrease and spam would probably drop, but only until the expected value of each post equals the micropayment price.

Micropayments could even increase spam. People might feel entitled to take more liberties with their posts if they are paying for them.

stcredzero3• 18 years ago

But since the success rate for SPAM is so low, it only takes a miniscule per-post charge to make it uneconomical. Also, the requirement for payment could be structured to make it much harder for spammers to make arbitrary new identities.

neilk• 18 years ago

That's very easy to say, but the reality is more complex.

Much of the attraction of Craigslist is the free posting. Not all the groups are commercial in nature, many are just discussion. Also, the Craigslist founders think of the site as a public service.

No convenient and reliable micropayments system yet exists. Cost per transaction on credit cards is far too high. Online games use private currencies; you buy a big chunk of currency and you draw on it for in-game transactions. That could work, and it kills spam dead, but the big upfront cost would make many users hesitate before posting. It's not like a game, where you can expect to play for hours at a time. I bet most Craigslist users post perhaps once or twice a year.

Extra screens for purchasing would also complicate the UI. Another deterrent to posting.

It's not clear to me that you could set a price which deters spammers but allows the good postings through. The economics are different from email spam. A spammer can flood a Craigslist group with just a few hundred messages, and then Craigslist will do the work of distributing it to millions.

Furthermore some Craigslist spammers are real local businesses that just post too frequently, or in improper places. Like a local car dealership flooding the used cars group. The dealership's expected return might be a few thousand dollars, and they may be perfectly willing to spend $20.

Maybe payments are part of the solution, but I don't think they can be the whole solution; at least not if Craigslist wants to be like it has been in the past.

milwaukeegreeny• 18 years ago

I'm jealous. I've applied there a couple of times but could never close the deal. Good going Jerem.

I'm Joining Craigslist in July (by Jeremy Zawodny)

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