What is the best quality of craiglist as a succesful startups?

Not sure how anyone could argue that Craigslist is not successful. They have not focused on making a boatload of money, other than that -- they are wildly successful.

The most likely reasons for the success are as follows:

• easy to use (post & search)
• simple and straight forward UI
• it is mostly free (free to browse)
• a platform (classifieds) that appeals to a wide range of people
• not intimidating

Just my .02

Craigslist is simple enough to help anyone bridge online world with the real world. There are many negative points to their system, but usability and the general goodness of most people enable it continue succeeding in places where it has reached a critical mass.

I have used craigslist a lot. IMHO the site is CLEAN and SIMPLE. Loads fast. No graphics. You reach to the required place with less clicks and they have implemented simple navigation.

And ofcourse now it is a proven web site with lots of users.

Thanks

I think a lot of the answers are dealing with why craigslist is popular as a service vs why is it successful as a startup.

Service Popularity: - Jeff's answers cover this.

As a business: - Since most of the offer was free as a service it gets very little of the value from the traffic and transactions its facilitating. - Expecations have now been created that the business isn't getting revenue so inovation on their platform is difficult to build on. - At risk of being associated to some of the shadier markets and may get future liable to those transactions while not having pricing to get the revenue to cover such liability. - Business is not really a commercial entity though it facilitates commercial transactions. - Business cost structure is low and so the revenue they are recieving is profitable.

So its sucessful because it competes on price and has a cost structure that its marginal cost is almost zero so it can continue to be sustaining at this low revenue model. It has some quality control measures in place with passionete policing of the community to make sure that its not spammy or things are categorized correctly. Craig is obviously passionete about the business and as long as that passion to keep it strong remains I think it will continoue but the amount of value it creates for its users and effort to keep it up is fairly high compared to its return. So in my mind its a B class startup because they just won't capitilize on the market penetration.

It works. If I'm selling something, almost guaranteed I will sell it. If I'm buying something, awfully strong chance I'll find it.

So a product with a great value proposition. And why did it have those? Because of points above - 1st to market, free, overpriced and much less convenient alternative.

I'm not sure I would use craigslist as a model to emulate. It is one to look at closely, since it seems to be unique in many ways. The Wired article "Why Craigslist is such a mess" is a good read.

The best quality is that it successfully aggregated a price sensitive offline marketplace (classified ad) with an easy to understand online service. It's worse qualities? Read the article.

Disclaimer, I'm not American either.

Regarding Craigslist and "successful" -- by which metric, how do you define "successful" in this context?

Before Craigslist, the paid classified ads in local newspapers was a multi-billion-dollar business in USA. Craigslist started giving away local classified ads for free, because they could, by leveraging the Internet and open source software. Joel Spolsky famously thinks that Craigslist is a brand of evil, because it practically denies everyone else revenue from classified ads.

IMHO Craiglist is successful in maintaining a very specific spirit and manner of doing things, as set down by Craig Newmark. It is also highly successful in having many classifieds, and in pageviews. In promoting the common good by making classified ads cheap and ubiquitous -- maybe. In making money -- not at all.

One clear "lesson" of Craiglist is that if a given product is popular at a high price point, then it will certainly be popular if it becomes free of charge. Did that surprise anyone?

I'd add to Jeff's list that Craigslist has largely replaced hugely overpriced classified ads in local newspapers. Autos, rentals, and employment classifieds are free in all but a few markets (and a fraction of newspaper costs in those segments). The employment ads alone on Craigslist in the Bay Area cost the San Francisco Chronicle Newspaper multiple millions of dollars per year in revenue.

• It's free (unless you are a company posting jobs).
• I think it was first (at least pretty early)
• By having a local focus, it lends itself to selling things you don't want to pay to ship.
• Craig put a personal touch on the site

To be honest I can't explain it either.

I used it once in my life to sell my old boiler (sold in four days).

I know someone that he had a "full-house" garage sale on CraigList and he had people all over the state coming to his house to buy stuff.

Is really amazing how much traffic they get.