In earlier posts, I inferred that Craigslist’s only methods for eliminating racism and prostitution from its Web site are a flagging system and “education” pages. But it turns out there’s one other way – charging users.
Here’s how the San Diego Business Journal reported the new charge for job ads in that market:
According to Craigslist spokeswoman Susan MacTavish Best, the fee improves the quality of postings by discouraging abuse of a free service. “All changes to the Craigslist site come from user requests and that includes when and where we charge for ads,” she said. “As a CL site becomes more and more popular, it makes it time consuming for users to wade through repeat postings and spam-like ads.”
First, when did Craigslist start calling itself CL? Anyway . . .
My guess is Craigslist charges for ads in each of its largest markets only partly because it wants to curtail spam. It doesn’t hurt to make money.
San Diego isn’t the first place where Craigslist charges. San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York City came first. And when ads aren't free, there are consequences.
Upon initiating those fee structures, Craigslist officials admit that the sheer number of job postings fell significantly in those markets, but insist the overall quality of postings increased.
All of this begs the question – and this is a real question – is it OK for newspapers to sabotage Craigslist?
