Sexy Widget

My Pubcon Presentation - Distributed Community

You can download my slides from a Pubcon presentation - called "Distributed Community: How To Extend Your Online Community Across Domains" - from the box.net widget in the right sidebar.

Craig Newmark Pubcon Keynote - Liveblogging

Craig Newmark – Keynote – Pubcon

(Live blogged - all from Craig Newmark's perspective)

My Note: Key messages are power flowing from few to more, 9B monthly pageviews, prosperity to solve conflict)

Keynote:

Nothing noble or altruistic about Craigslist.  It’s a community service.  We’re not a non-profit – we’re a weird for profit.

Craig not running things anymore.  Jim Buckmaster is the CEO.  Craig’s job is full time customer service. 

1994 Craig was working at Charles Schwab.  Evangelizing the web.  The Well was an inspiration – lots of people helping each other.  But there were abusers too back then.

Read about the Tragedy of the Commons – unless you enforce rules, the commons will be abused.

Wasn’t called spam back then.

In 1995 set up a simple email distribution list to share resources about stuff in San Francisco.  Then people started asking to list things for sale, and jobs.

Craig had a pocket protector and taped together glasses in high school.  Disenfranchisement of feeling left out in high school made him appreciate that on the web, everybody’s included.  Cnewmark.com.

Hit the 240 name max on his email server, got a friend to host it out of his basement.  But needed a name.  Decided to keep personal and quirky name. 

Next big jump was to start putting tags on emails by subject – jobs, products, etc.

In 95, Craig remembered he was a programmer and could convert email list into a website.  Started by converting emails to web  pages.  Craig hasn’t coded since 1999 – makes him sad.  Nobody will give him root access on Craigslist anymore :(

97 – site hit 1M pageviews per month.  Microsoft approached him to run banner ads on the site.  Craig figured he didn’t need the money (he was a software contractor), and he didn’t liked how the ads slowed the site down.  He decided no banner ads and no pop ups.  He had the luxury of making good money – again, nothing noble or altruistic about it.

Also in 1997, he was approached to make it a non-profit.

Tried this in 1998 – started charging for job postings.  But the company didn’t work as a volunteer organization.  Part was due to Craig’s leadership – he was distracted with contract programming.  Craig then took control, and moved it back to a for profit in 1999.  Hobby became a business.  Did some hiring.

Frankly, I was lousy manager, though better than some.  In 99, I hired Jim Buckmaster as a technical type.

End of 1999, rewrote the code.   Linux Apache MySQL and Perl.  If PHP had been around, he would have used it.  Craig wrote version 2 of the code, and hasn’t coded since.

Introduced Craigslist in New York in 2000 (but it didn’t take off until after 9/11)

Also introduced an anonymous relay for email addresses.  People complained, so they gave the option to include email address or not.

Since then, it has been slow continuous growth.  Both Jim and Craig are engineers.  No MBA influence – make things up as they go along.  Business Model hasn’t evolved at all.

In 2000, Craig asked the community how to pay the bills.  Community said charge people for jobs and real estate ads.  Oddly, the people that Craigslist charge want to be charged.  The real estate market is so predatory, that folks want some kind of a barrier to posts.

Craig is now part of a team of customer service agents, reporting to a guy named Clint.   Craig’s not in management. 

Closing in on 9B Pageviews per month.  Tech keeps getting better.  They’ve written their own caching system that they want to opensource.  Server farm of 120 cheap Linux machines, all running on Linux. 

Majority of desktops and notebooks run Linux as well.

Email tool of Craigslist is Pine – original email client that run the email list.

Craig has no skills for design, but as an engineer he appreciates simplicity.  “The visual appeal of a pipe wrench.” 

Keys to Success: advantage of first mover, and they’re largely free. 

No intention to sell the site.  Charging for less than 1% of the site.  Nothing noble – this feels right.  Running the site on an idea of shared values.  Pretty much everybody believe that they should give each other a break now and then.  Live and let live.  Treat people like you want to be treated.  All other values flow through that. 

Craig’s been doing customer service for a long time.  People are generally good, and bad guys are only less than 1% of the population.  The problem is that small number of people make a lot of noise.

“The reason you hear more from extremists, is because moderates have stuff to do” – Jon Stewart.

If you trust your community, they’ll respond in a trustworthy way.  Flagging for removal – if people agree, there is automated removal.  There has been gaming, but there are controls.

“Democracy is a lousy system, but better than the alternative.”

If you look at the web, something big is happening. 

Gutenberg invented the Internet 450 years ago.  The technology languished until blogger Martin Luther invented the first killer app.  The change was power flowing from very small groups of people to slightly larger groups of people.

Blogging tradition picked up by William of Orange, who enlisted bloggers like John Locke.  They started to blogging the platform to get William to the thrown – via coffee houses.  In San Francisco, the network of coffee houses is alive and kicking.

100 years later, Thomas Jefferson was a blogger.  Picking up on representative democracy.

What’s happening now?  The Internet is the world’s printing press.  The problem is attention – how do people find you?

Something big is happening.  Ordinary people, moderates are getting together and changing things on a massive scale.  Howard Dean campaign imploded, but made contributions to how internet can change elections.  Obama is doing the same.

Sunlight Foundation is funding tools that would allow any of us to be lobbyists. 

Electronic Frontier Foundation – standing up for our rights online.  Doing work on wireless wiretapping, and fighting the Telecom amnesty bill.  Craig giving speaking fee to EFF.  EFF does the heavy lifting and sticking their neck out against the big players.

Moderates are getting together and changing things. 

Yesterday was in Washington, with business people from Palestine and Israel.  The only way to stop the conflict is through prosperity.   The best expression of the values that make Craiglist work are the best expression of the country – The Marshall Plan.