Craigslist is a network of online communities focused on free classified advertisements — with sections devoted to jobs, housing, personals, goods, services, community, and discussion forums.
Craig Newmark, inspired by his experience with the early list-servs the WELL and Usenet, created the service in 1995 as an email distribution list for friends and friends-of-friends. The service was focused on the San Francisco community; most of its early postings were submitted by Newmark himself and were notices of social events of interest to software developers living and working in the Bay Area.
In 1996, Newmark, having registered “craigslist.org,” moved the list to the web. In 1999, he incorporated Craigslist as a private, for-profit company. In 2000, with a staff of nine — who worked out of Newmark’s San Francisco apartment — Craigslist expanded into nine more U.S. cities; by 2003, the service had expanded to 22 U.S. cities. The network, since 2000 lead by the web designer Jim Buckmaster — “possibly the only CEO ever described as anti-establishment, a communist, and a socialistic anarchist” — currently employs 30 staffers, and includes over 700 local sites spread across 70 countries. Craigslist has versions in English, French, German, Italian, Portugese, and Spanish.
Byliner is a publishing start-up that publishes narrative nonfiction e-books and showcases long-form journalism. Founded in summer 2011 by John Tayman, Byliner has billed itself as a way for long-form journalism to get the attention it deserves. It typically publishes stories longer than typical magazine pieces but shorter than books. Its publishing arm, Byliner Originals,…
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