[via Anil Dash] Excerpts from an IT Conversations interview with the creator Craig’s List, the original social networking site (sort of):
In a sense, we’re a classified site along with discussion boards, on the ‘Net, and people can advertise what they are used to advertising. There are some positive differences. People can write as much as they want. They can include photos and so on. What’s really different is the atmosphere, the context around what people do on our site because weoh, we think we’ve earned and created a culture of trust which means that people generally do trust each other on the site. When something wrong happens, we do what we can to deal with it although more importantly, we’ve turned over to the public the means of dealing with stuff which shouldn’t be there.
We want to make enough money to pay the bills and feel comfortable about our future to prepare for problems and expansion. That’s to say that right now we charge only job posters, employers and recruiters who are posting in the Bay Area site. A couple of years ago, we asked our community what was appropriate to charge for, they told us, “Charging for job postings is okay, charging for apartment postings is okay,” and not much else. There was very little consensus, and we stick with that.
I’d like to see an equivalent for India. Something on the lines of IndiaMirror or PIN-News – more on this in a little while.
