Craig Newmark Craigslist founder Talks About The 1st Web 2.0 social network-Craigslist
BrokerIPTV: We are at Inman connect in New York City 2008 and I am honored to be here with Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist. What I would be talking today with Craig. Brad Inman, the other day which is speak, I know you missed his speech, but he was talking about transparency, he was talking about video, social networks in the market. I am just curious to know what your thoughts are regards to the real estate space and our market conditions.
Craig Newmark: I mean I would be the person to ask about real estate conditions. What we see on the site seems to be some are softening a demand, and more people trying to sell things themselves, but as far as I could tell, what we see on the site is just what you read in the news, there is softening through out the country, but less so in the markets like New York and San Francisco.
BrokerIPTV: Right. Well, I think what we found in our market is really Cragslist is really become a integrate part of lot of real estate brokers lifvs. I mean we use Cragslist extensively, and if you've seen an increase use in your product as far as for the marketing homes?
Craig Newmark: What we see is slow, steady growth, which is our entire history. I mean the race between hare and tortoise, we are the tortoise, so we just keep growing in pretty most all regards, it is slow sometimes, usually slow and we see increase usage. If you look hard enough, may be we would see increase usage regarding for sale by owner (FSBO), these days. Now, we haven't really looked. For us it just that will be a matter of satisfying curiosity, rather than anything objective.
BrokerIPTV: I am curious any plans or a change in the future as far as Craigslist goes?
Craig Newmark: Nothing really, we do incremental improvements, small additions to functionality, we introduce multiple language support couple months ago and so far just supporting Spanish, but we will be doing more as that goes on, there will we more cities and countries. We got to get let us say multi-cities search engine and we have to provide better and better customer service tools.
BrokerIPTV: Excellent, I mean also I know is you do things, and you do things well, you have been steady as she goes. Like I said Craigslist is a very much, I mean you become in your network, the classified ad networks really become just part of peoples everyday fabric, their life.
Craig Newmark: We seem to work out pretty well for lot of people and we appreciate people using our site.
BrokerIPTV: Any, are we still staying on the consistent platform or most things are going to remain free?
Craig Newmark: On our site that is the plan. We do not have any needs to make lots of money and we do not vow any VC or banks or anything. So, we just keep plugging away. Very any recent pricing insurrection we have done, have been new counter scams. We find that if we charge it token fee, say in job post that tends to discourage the bad guys.
BrokerIPTV: Wow, excellent, I never even thought about, it is excellent. Well, Craig, I appreciate you really taking time on your busy day. Thank you very much.
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