Craig Newmark, the Principled Jerk

http://blog.jeremymims.com/craig-newmark-the-principled-jerk

by lloydarmbrust • 14 years ago

126 102 14 years ago

blog.jeremymims.com

rubidium• 14 years ago

Lay off the personal attacks. No place here.

Any company is entitled to whatever they provide and it's not your place to sit as judge. People give them the information, for free. Craigslist displays it, for free.

Unless someone sues Craigslist for some sort of anti-trust regulation, the challenge for people desiring to compete in the Craigslist's market is to build something from the ground up. (Oh, and it's always a market people are after, it's not "Oh, we want to help people find apartments better because we're nice people"). The fact that it's difficult is the entrepreneur's problem, not Craigs.

badclient2• 14 years ago

and it's not your place to sit as judge

Strongly disagree. Just as a company is entitled to provide whatever they wish, consumers are entitled to form views of the company based on their actions.

zachinglis• 14 years ago

Correct. And it's our job to judge the company, not an employee of that company.

edj2• 14 years ago

consumers are entitled to form views of the company based on their actions.

And arguably not just entitled to form views, but morally obligated to do so. In a mostly unregulated industry (like classified ads), the court of public opinion is one of the more powerful checks civil society can deploy to police corporations.

Boycotts, bad press, strikes, activism, and the like can all change corporate behavior to some extent. For most people, these tools are the only way to influence corporations. Most people don't have the money to lobby Congress. "Voting with your dollars" doesn't really work with monopolies, or quasi-monopolies. And founding competing startups is a fantasy even for most entrepreneurially-minded hackers, let alone regular folk with families, mortgages, and no programming skill.

If we say these methods shouldn't ever be used, we're basically saying only laws can regulate corporate behavior. That sounds like a recipe for more and worse laws, more lobbying, and worse corporate behavior.

DenisM• 14 years ago

"Legally rightful" is often different from "morally rightful". Craig is morally in the wrong - he seized control over classifieds market, and is now using that position to stall the progress and harm consumers.

By way of analogy, saying "build your own stuff" is akin to saying "build your own popular OS and sell it to OEMs" in the face of a crushing Microsoft monopoly on the nineties. The network effect is far too strong for a free-market approach to work its magic, and as a result we all suffer.

I wonder if Craig realizes he became a Microsoft-style monopoly. That should be a very uncomfortable thought to him.

smacktoward• 14 years ago

he seized control over classifieds market

You say "seized control" like he showed up with a bunch of armed goons and wrested it away from its rightful owner. Craigslist dominates online classifieds because they recognized it was a market worth serving years before the incumbents in classifieds did, and served it. It's not a crime to get there first.

I wonder if Craig realizes he became a Microsoft-style monopoly

I must have missed the part where Craigslist used their dominant position in classified advertising to unfairly benefit other products they offer.

slantyyz2• 14 years ago

> I wonder if Craig realizes he became a Microsoft-style monopoly.

Where I live, I hear people mention that they use Kijiji at least as much as I hear them mention Craigslist.

jeremymims3• 14 years ago

This isn't a personal attack. It's an observation. I sincerely lack a better way to characterize Craig's behavior. Since Craigslist is as small as it is and is named after the founder, it's very difficult to explain these seemingly irrational decisions without understanding the man behind them.

I think at heart he's a good guy, but he's clearly not thinking correctly here.

ericd4• 14 years ago

Hi Jeremy, thanks for writing about this. I actually think Craig has removed himself from the decision-making there, which probably explains the seeming conflict between his personality and the company's.

waterlesscloud3• 14 years ago

Not thinking correctly? Or not thinking the way you think he should?

flatline35• 14 years ago

This kind of diatribe -- along with the PadMapper debacle -- simply makes the participants look like naive entitled children.

You don't understand why Craig won't play in your sandbox, berate him for not doing so, shout at the world that CRAIG IS A MEANIE.

Yet, Craigslist is phenomenally successful, and has an enviable organization model that has allowed them to stay true to what matters to them. The fact that these things don't matter to you does not make them wrong.

Craigslist has a "lifestyle" business with revenue numbers that would make any startup green with envy, and it seems to me that you -- and others like you -- can't get your head around the fact that Craig (and Craigslist) is so successful, and yet they do not want to play your game.

If you think Craigslist sucks, then either make a better one, or figure out how to work with Craigslist within a framework that does not run counter to their established ethos. That probably means no venture capital, and no standard corporate organizational model.

Simply taking what you want -- or haranguing them openly for not operating the way you would like -- is simply childish petulance.

mikeryan• 14 years ago

I actually find CL's actions entirely rational. A business is about building value and services such as pad mapper decrease that value. Its easy to say PadMapper is just an overlay on top of Craigslist data - but its not. PadMapper aggregates data from other providers and in fact allows users to post to it directly.

If I owned PadMapper my business plan would be to leech listings from all over the place in an effort to grab traffic to the point where people use my service (and pay to list there) first. Isn't that the goal? CL doesn't want these types of services to build their market on the backs of the value they've created for their customers (people who post) and their audience.

natrius4• 14 years ago

I agree that it's better to ascribe the responsibilities for Craigslist's recent actions to the company, not Craig Newmark.

That aside, the company's actions clearly merit calling them jerks. Their customers are trying to sell, rent and employ. Craigslist forbids them to do so via any other means. Acting against the interests of its customers makes a company a jerk.

waterlesscloud3• 14 years ago

In what way is Craigslist forbidding its customers to advertise by other means?

The rhetoric on this is getting ridiculous.

ktizo7• 14 years ago

Anyone can sit and judge on anything they wish, you can judge someone's business, their politics, their religion, whatever. You might think it is impolite, however there isn't any hard and fast rule that says anyone has to be polite either.

You are judging that other people aren't allowed to judge someone else on the service they provide. Why do you feel that you can tell them the terms of what is reasonable behaviour while in the same breath tell them that it is not their place to do the same to others?

dhyasama• 14 years ago

I read it as a critique of Craig's business decisions, not a personal attack.

rwallace• 14 years ago

Craig is morally entitled to provide or not provide whatever service he wants. He is not morally entitled to behave like an organized crime boss and shut down other people's services by threat of armed force.

azylman• 14 years ago

To be honest, I didn't get the "principled" impression out of anything written here - I think the author was just trying to soften the blow a little bit...

ericd4• 14 years ago

I think that Craig actually isn't behind these decisions, though, which would explain the apparent conflict between his friendly attitude and the unfriendly attitude of the company overall.

fusiongyro2• 14 years ago

The company goes to some effort to maintain that "we're almost a non-profit" angle though; Jim Buckmaster's "About" page calls himself a communist, for example:

http://www.craigslist.org/about/jim_buckmaster

Like it or not, Craig is basically the brand identity for Craigslist. It's going to be awfully hard for Craigslist to separate themselves meaningfully from Craig. The more discordance there is between the two, the worse it is for their brand image, whatever the motivation.

fleitz• 14 years ago

And now Buckmaster owns your posts for the benefit of the community, sounds perfectly fitting with someone who describes themselves as communist.

Soon they will roll out a special section of craigslist apartments that looks like Jony Ive designed it but it's only for party members.

bengarvey2• 14 years ago

A while back I wrote a greasemonkey script for craigslist that allowed you to filter out any for-sale listings that didn't have pictures. It was called, NoPicsNoService, and after I was done I emailed Craig the link. He emailed me back that day and said it was cool.

Less than a year later, that feature was built into craigslist.

badclient2• 14 years ago

Well I'm glad it took them less than a year to add another condition to their sql query.

bengarvey2• 14 years ago

Also, a checkbox.

mapgrep• 14 years ago

"They’re not concerned with fixing anything for newspapers because Craig refuses to accept responsibility for helping break them."

Newmark's repeated donations and support to both new online journalism endeavors and old-line journalism institutes like Knight Foundation are a matter of public record. An example Google search: http://www.google.com/search?q=craig+newmark+donation+(journ...

Newmark has expressly stated that he makes these donations of time and money partly because of the role Craigslist played in disrupting newspapers. I find it especially impressive that he does this given that he has nothing to apologize for. Newspaper classifieds were insanely expensive and huge cash cows.

jeremymims3• 14 years ago

Keep in mind that I was explaining to a newspaper publisher why Craigslist would not work with them to help them make more money. Craig's focus is on building tools that help fact-check stories and help news organizations remain trustworthy, not efforts to help increase monetization.

That's fine, but it's a bit like polishing the brass on the Titanic.

From NiemanLab:

"Craig Newmark’s most recently announced project, CraigConnects, is, as best as I can tell, a way of funneling Newmark’s attention capital towards (mostly) nonprofit organizations."

Attention capital is nice and welcome, but hardly the thing that will save good journalism.

debacle• 14 years ago

I'd like to offer up a different scenario:

Craig Newmark, the Guy with Fuck You Money

This guy is customer support. Yes, he's more than that, but he has enough money to focus on the part of the business he likes - sitting in his walled garden, pruning the content. God that has to be fulfilling.

Why criticize him for that?

angrow• 14 years ago

A generally good post, but the claim that Newmark "refuses to take responsibility" for "breaking" newspapers is something of a howler. Newspapers do not have a monopoly on watchdog or investigative journalism, and even if there is less of that sort of reporting nowadays (a claim itself worthy of investigation and fact-checking), it can't be blamed on any one guy, no matter how successful his business.

jessriedel8• 14 years ago

This misses the philosophy which I have been told is behind craiglist's behavior: a sort of extreme localism. They want to try to keep craigslist informal, encourage bartering instead of sales, etc.

I think there are some insights buried in this philosophy, it's just that in this case craiglist is very wrong. If you actually want to understand the man and the organization (rather than just bad-mouth them) you need to address this issue.

jmduke2• 14 years ago

I seriously don't understand the Craigslist drama.

It's an incredibly basic service that is astounding because of its network effect.

So if you want to compete with it, make a BETTER service. Don't rely on them. Adoption isn't going to be instantaneous, but if PadMapper's approach really is so much better than why do they need to bootstrap themselves with Craigslist-affiliated data?

jessriedel8• 14 years ago

> if PadMapper's approach really is so much better than why do they need to bootstrap themselves with Craigslist-affiliated data?

Because as you said: (massive) network effects. The claim is that they are effectively a monopoly. You can't tell someone "Sure it won't be instantaneous, but if you think you're so much better than Standard Oil, just go out-compete them."

Androsynth3• 14 years ago

SO physically owned all the oil-wells. Physical ownership is much, much different than network effects.

zheng• 14 years ago

I don't understand the drama either, but everyone knows it isn't that easy. As has been said many times, their network effect is what matters here, not features. I use craigslist and I hate it (seriously, something about the site irks me) but I know I have no choice if I want the best chance of finding something. I used padmapper and loved it; it was a better service.

For a good example of how strong network effects play into things, look at Google+. Seriously, if Google couldn't kill Facebook by building a better service (IMO), how do you expect a company with exactly 0 existing users to usurp CL?

TBH I don't have a good solution because I don't think regulation is the answer here. Up until about today I would have said the best value add for a service is to start by targeting sellers, and grow the buyer market later (e.g. use service X to post ads to CL, <other marketplace>, etc)

streptomycin• 14 years ago

> It's an incredibly basic service that is astounding because of its network effect.

> ...

> If PadMapper's approach really is so much better than why do they need to bootstrap themselves with Craigslist-affiliated data?

You already said it. Because of the network effect.

jmduke2• 14 years ago

I understand what you mean, but network effects aren't unsurmountable. I'd argue that social networks are the pinnacle of services sustained by a network effect, but there's still fluidity (MySpace was a pretty terrible platform sustained by a strong network -- until it wasn't.)

dredmorbius7• 14 years ago

Much as it would be less hypocritical of CL to share, which would seem to align with their publicly stated values, they won't.

The key is to disrupt innovatively. CL's structure sets a high bar, but not an impossible one. PM is one of the first alternatives that looks plausible in a major portion of CL's space (though there are also some job boards that seem pretty viable, several of which also re-list CL postings).

Edit: By DeMenthon's own comments, CL offered a data-sharing agreement for $5000 + 10% of revenues. Really, that's reasonable on CL's part.

http://go.bloomberg.com/tech-blog/2012-07-25-craigslist-goes...

nostromo2• 14 years ago

Craigslist is a business. Once you stop thinking of it as a non-profit, everything Craig does makes sense.

Do you think PadMapper (if they were to overtake CL) or AirBnb or Google or anyone else will let anyone crawl their data and disrupt their revenue stream without putting up a fight? Of course not.

The cognitive dissonance here is simply caused by people thinking CL is a non-profit, which he has shown it is not.

Zombieball2• 14 years ago

I don't understand personally how padmapper interrupts Craigslist's revenue stream. All posts direct back to CL.

I suppose you could argue that if padmapper found a new awesome data source to crawl & became so big they no longer needed craigslist and people stop bothering to check CL for rental postings THEN padmapper could be affecting their revenue stream.

nostromo2• 14 years ago

Padmapper is for-profit, just like Craigslist. Padmapper wants to eat away at CL by taking listings directly through Padlister, which is how Padmapper makes money.

jessriedel8• 14 years ago

I think the standard response here is that CL clearly leaves massive amounts of money on the table. It can't be modeled well as a for-profit company. Whether or not it can be modeled as a non-profit with a coherent philosophy is debatable, but just pointing out that some of its actions seem profit-driven does not eliminate the apparent conflict with other actions.

nollidge2• 14 years ago

> It can't be modeled well as a for-profit company

I'm not an MBA, but why the hell not? They entice people to become regular users with all the free stuff, building a network, allowing them to make an enormous profit off of the few products they do sell.

If they started charging for other things besides job ads (and the other 1 or 2 things they charge for), they could very well start losing money because of people refusing to pay and going elsewhere.

dredmorbius7• 14 years ago

Sure it can.

The money left on the table builds value by:

1. Leaving very little profit margin for any potential competitor.

2. Ensuring a continued large network effect, CL's principle source of value.

nc• 14 years ago

I think this raises an interesting question about the nature of natural monopolies in technology, and the lack of competition caused by that effect.

Craigslist is powerful cause of it's network effects, and it's getting away with what is most probably an inferior service.

res0nat0r4• 14 years ago

This sounds like another person who is pissed off he can't have a piece of the CL pie (read: money).

> I figured the reasonable response from Craig would have been to hire Romy and his partner or buy their technology. It’s literally what every reasonable company in the world does when innovative young people come along and make something your users want.

Why should I as a CEO be expected to cater to your whims of how you think I should run my company? I hear about people complaining all the time about how ugly and cluttered Amazons website is. Would we all be hating Jeff Bezos as much as we do Craig if someone started scraping all of the Amazon.com product reviews and organizing them in a web2.0-html5-ajax-startup-cool manner and Jeff sued their pants off?

a2tech• 14 years ago

People that say Craigslist is broken are utterly, incomprehensibly, wrong. Its an ugly website. It lacks features people on this website think it needs. But average people love it AS IS. The tone of this article makes it seem like Craigslist killed the newspaper industry-and paints Craig as the bad guy. Newspapers failed to adapt. Full period, stop. Craig invented a tiny website for his neighborhood and it went crazy popular and spread across the country. His product isn't what we want-but it is what he and most of the people using it want.

pessimizer• 14 years ago

For me the site nearly causes physical pain to look for anything specific on. For every non-tech person I know, they still think it's the best site ever made, and some of them sit on it all day like facebook addicts.

And I'll be damned, but when I wanted to get rid of some trash in my house that I thought someone else might've found useful, I had the ad up in 20 minutes. Before the sun went down, all of it was gone and I had a couple of $20s in my pocket.

I didn't have every move monetized, they didn't make me pay per message after the 3rd response, and I'm pretty sure they actually deleted my ad [at some point] after I pressed delete. I trust Newmark's stewardship, and hopefully this Padmapper thing shakes them up enough to introduce a non-intrusive interface for apartment hunting that makes my head hurt less.

koeselitz2• 14 years ago

At this point, it seems as though journalism made an extraordinarily dire mistake in relying principally on revenue streams that are entirely distinct from their central business. Shouldn't journalism rather have sought to monetize the thing it does best - journalism? If it had, maybe it wouldn't be in this mess right now.

czr80• 14 years ago

This seems a strange comment to make, given how much of the web is advertising funded. Or do you think Google should charge users a subscription fee?

dredmorbius7• 14 years ago

My Eric DeMenthon's own admission, Craigslist offered a data sharing/licensing agreement of $5000 and 10% of revenues. That's pretty reasonable. If PadMapper can't cover this through its own business model, perhaps there just isn't much money on the table?

http://go.bloomberg.com/tech-blog/2012-07-25-craigslist-goes...

"Principled businessman" seems a bit more fair than Jeremy's blog post would suggest.

And, as always, there's a lot nobody but Craig (and Jim) and Eric know. I'm seeing one heck of a PR game being waged.

xanados• 14 years ago

That is not fully accurate. Craigslist offered a licensing agreement for MOBILE ONLY: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/07/craigslist-sues-p...

Given that PadMapper is a desktop-focused website (and the mobile experience is terrible, so I imagine 90% of their use is desktop), this is sort of a non-starter. It would be as if the Apple were willing to license Samsung their design patents but only on the Newton.

dredmorbius7• 14 years ago

Web only? ORLY? https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.padmapper&....

Edit: oh, not what you said. Granted, yes, I found the PM desktop tool much more useful than mobile, though mobile was good enough to use when I was roaming around town.

gwern• 14 years ago

> He has very odd priorities. Craig spends his days manually removing flagged spam in a terminal view. You and me, we can’t understand someone like this.

Is this true?

rprasad• 14 years ago

tl;dr: whine, whine whine.

gojomo• 14 years ago

Remember, Craigslist's best-funded competitor is Kijiji/eBayClassifieds. Craigslist has alleged eBay improperly used its minority stake and one-time board seat at Craigslist to help launch Kijiji using proprietary knowledge of Craigslist.

An initial lawsuit over some of the issues in Delaware resulted in a split decision in 2010: eBay lost its board seat but the move by the other CL shareholders to dilute eBay's stake was reversed.

Another lawsuit in California appears to be still in a lengthy discovery process, more than a year after a judge ruled against eBay's motion to dismiss, if I'm interpreting the data here correctly:

http://webaccess.sftc.org/Scripts/Magic94/mgrqispi94.dll?APP...

As a result...

• Craigslist may seem paranoid but perhaps justifiably so

• Craiglist may not want to grant an inch to anyone that might then also be used by Kijiji/eBay, with their near-bottomless pockets, to embrace/extend/extinguish the Craiglist core service

• this sort of lengthy deep-discovery process can distract management and also impair internal communications/flexibility, knowing every word could become discovered fodder for a current (or future) lawsuit

Any assessment that Craigslist is being a 'jerk' about competitive issues, without considering this giant factor, is missing a giant part of the picture.

Craig Newmark, the Principled Jerk

Related Stories