Craigslist founder Craig Newmark says the highly profitable Web company he founded that helps Internet users find jobs, apartments, furniture and dates, doesn’t have a business model.
“We make it up as we go along,” he told attendees at NAA’s Annual Convention on Monday morning during a conversation with television host Charlie Rose. “We’re a community service.”
Indeed, Newmark’s title is customer service representative.
“We do one thing really well and we figure we should stick with that.” As a result, people “feel connected through our site, even though it’s mainly classifieds.”
Newmark dismissed suggestions that his venture may be contributing to the death of newspapers.
“I hear people talking about losses in classified revenue,” Newmark said. “I have to confess some confusion,” he added, noting “talk of newspapers’ 10 to 20 percent profit margins.”
Newmark said newspapers’ greatest community service would be to use those profits to invest more money in investigative reporting.
He admitted that he likes to get his “news” from comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. While he first said he’s not interested in starting a newspaper, he later qualified that by saying he would like to start “a muckraking paper about multibillion-dollar scams out of Washington.”
Interviewer Rose tried his best to get Newmark to reveal some grand business plan, but Newmark said there’s no particular rhyme or reason for what comes next. “If people want us in a smaller town, we’ll get around to it…and fire up a city. The technology is template driven.”
What keeps him up at night? Newmark said he’s on a quest for the perfect “hummingbird feeder.”
-- Rebecca Ross Albers