[Foundation-l] advertising craigslist

[Mark Williamson]

Key phrase for me in this e-mail was "CraigsList itself is a for-profit",
despite the fact that it was hidden in a parenthetical remark after lots of
glowing praise... The "Craigslist Foundation" is not Craigslist.

According to the Wikipedia article on Craigslist:

"The company does not formally disclose financial or ownership information.
Analysts and commentators have reported varying figures for its annual
revenue, ranging from $10 million in 2004, $20 million in 2005, and $25
million in 2006 to possibly $150 million in 2007"

"It is believed to be owned principally by Newmark, Buckmaster, and eBay
(the three board members). eBay owns approximately 25%, and Newmark is
believed to own the largest stake."

We put the name of a for-profit organization flashing across the top of the
site... What you said: "In spite of huge web traffic, Craigslist is run with
a staff of 32 and carries no ads, and Craig founded a non-profit
organization, the Craigslist Foundation, to support other non-profits."
seems like it is intended to distract the reader from the truth, which is
that Craigslist is for profit and owned partly by corporations like eBay.

Mark

skype: node.ue


On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 1:21 AM, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> Just as a bit of general background for this thread:
>
> The Craig Newmark banner is currently running at 20% on the English
> Wikipedia. It's a pilot to see how our audience responds to
> endorsements and testimonials by third parties. (So far, it is doing
> reasonably well, but not fantastically so; we will likely move on to
> different messages soon.) We're not running a large endorsement
> campaign this year, but we wanted to at least get some data on a
> banner of this type to help us determine whether we want to run more
> such messages in the future.
>
> We approached Craig and asked him whether he would help us with this,
> and he generously agreed. We chose Craig because he represents, to
> many people, a philosophy of the web that is comparable to ours. In
> spite of huge web traffic, Craigslist is run with a staff of 32 and
> carries no ads, and Craig founded a non-profit organization, the
> Craigslist Foundation, to support other non-profits. (CraigsList
> itself is a for-profit.) We're pleased that Craig has joined our
> Advisory Board, and we're happy he agreed to this endorsement.  That
> said, any kind of personal endorsement can certainly polarize.
>
> If, in future, we decide to run more such endorsements, we'll likely
> want to come up with a rich mix of different kinds of people with very
> different backgrounds, both to appeal to different segments of our
> audience, and to get a better understanding of the overall trends.
> --
> Erik Möller
> Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
>
> Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
>
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