With a full-time staff of just 19 people, ubiquitous online classifieds site Craigslist has managed to outflank newspapers in almost 200 cities around the world by providing a forum where locals can buy, sell, trade, date, rent, or just rant and rave. News.com says that CEO Jim Buckmaster – who should probably land in the CEO name hall of fame – recently revealed the company’s secrets to Fortune’s technology editor.
Unfortunately, News.com isn’t Fortune, so we’re going to have to wait for the secrets. That said, the article does make note (as most reports of Buckmaster or site Founder Craig Newmark do) of the company’s laid-back philosophy, including its tendency to eschew conventional business doctrine and not to sweat declines in revenue growth. Says Buckmaster, “Our traffic growth in the past 12 months was about 200 percent. If it slows to 100 percent, I don’t think that’s the end of the world.”
Sure doesn’t sound like the stuff of business secrets, but two of the company’s other mantras – 1) keep costs low and 2) meet the needs of the consumer, do sound very much like another very successful company (hint: it starts with “Wa” and ends with “l-mart”). Tim Redmond of the San Francisco Guardian also makes this comparison, although his is decidedly more ‘rant and rave’:
“In many ways, he’s like a Wal-Mart – yeah, landlords get cheaper real estate ads, and consumers find some bargains, but the money all goes out of town. And he puts nothing back into the community.”
And that salvo led to a scathing response from Jeff Jarvis at Buzzmachine, who discloses his personal friendship and professional relationship with Newmark before firing back: “Creating a means and a place where people can meet for social or business purposes does…build community; that’s what the internet is about.” Why, given ample time and opportunity, didn’t local papers rise to meet the needs of their communities the way Craigslist has done?
While we can certainly sympathize with the newspapers of the world, whose dwindling relevance in their own back yards has their employees feeling squeezed, one thing’s for sure: screaming about it can’t help them.
