| Just in the last few months on craigslist I found a new apartment, a cleaning service, a lawnmower, a couple of pieces of furniture, and a place to accept donations of things I didn't need when I moved.
Some other good things about craigslist: it doesn't require much in the way of technical skill from users; it's easy to post; it's easy to use. This means that a very wide range of people can offer goods and services on it, such as landlords who only have one or two units to rent, and an equally wide range of people can shop for things on it. The site isn't jazzed up with a lot of animation, frames, ads, and other fancy stuff, which means that it loads quickly and displays well even on old computers with outdated browsers (like the one I use at home). Because each user posts the information directly, instead of going through some central point, information is posted (and can be deleted) very quickly. If a landlord posts an apartment, they can take the information off craigslist as soon as they find a tenant. With other rental services (some of which have gone out of business as a result of craigslist) listings would sometimes be up for two or three weeks after the apartment was rented, either because the staff was too busy or because it looked better to prospective subscribers to have more listings available than there really were. |
Craigslist's Success