Craigslist
Discussion
Clay Shirky:
"Imagine, in 1996, asking some net-savvy soul to expound on the potential of craigslist, then a year old and not yet incorporated. The answer you’d almost certainly have gotten would be extrapolation: “Mailing lists can be powerful tools”, “Social effects are intertwining with digital networks”, blah blah blah. What no one would have told you, could have told you, was what actually happened: craiglist became a critical piece of infrastructure. Not the idea of craigslist, or the business model, or even the software driving it. Craigslist itself spread to cover hundreds of cities and has become a part of public consciousness about what is now possible. Experiments are only revealed in retrospect to be turning points.
In craigslist’s gradual shift from ‘interesting if minor’ to ‘essential and transformative’, there is one possible answer to the question “If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?” The answer is: Nothing will work, but everything might. Now is the time for experiments, lots and lots of experiments, each of which will seem as minor at launch as craigslist did, as Wikipedia did, as octavo volumes did." (http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking-the-unthinkable/)
More Information
Listen or watch:
- Craig Newmark on Craigslist: The founder of craigslist talks with Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales
- Craig Newmark on his experience with Craigslist: interview by David Weinberger.
- Craig Newmark on Customer Co-development at Craigslist
- 24 Hours on Craigslist: well-received documentary on the social aspects of Craigslist [1]