Authored by: Spine on Monday, February 07 2005 @ 05:57 PM

FYI, the confirmation email that CL initially mailed to you when you posted that ad gives you the ability to edit or delete your post. Perhaps you know that already.

The overseas buyers might be con artists. Apparently CL, like ebay, is a magnet for people seeking to trick sellers into making sketchy Western Union transactions.

CL is a beautiful thing. Burlington's a big boy now. I wish my parents had never left. But now my family's out west, and I love Portland. What's a Vermonter-at-heart to do?

Candleblog is loading very slowly today, for some reason. Maybe it's scared of the hawk.

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Authored by: billsimmon on Monday, February 07 2005 @ 07:13 PM

yes, I knew I could delete my CL posting but I sort of like tracking the progress of BTV's little CL experiment. I am hoping to get innundated.

Cblog is loading okay for me, but the new lunar phase block is all messed up. I noticed that it's messed up on another blog I frequent too so the problem isn't coming form here. At least I think it's not. Maybe candleblog broke the moon.

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Authored by: Ntodd on Monday, February 07 2005 @ 07:57 PM

Fucking Candleblog, always breaking celestial objects. BTW, Seven Days has updated their website (finally!) and i've been asked to help them as they try to figure out how to stay competitive now that Clist is in BTV. Alot of their revenue comes from advertising, and apparently many alternative pubs have seen their revenues drop once Clist comes to town. Mebbe I'll do a Candleblog post on this, but I just thot I'd throw that out there. If anybody has suggestions for the 7D site, I'd like to hear them.

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Authored by: billsimmon on Monday, February 07 2005 @ 08:33 PM

Interesting! I actually had a long emial discussion about this very subject a few weeks ago. I live Seven Days, but as far as CL is concerned I think they're SOL. They can't compete online against CL, which is completely free in Burlington. There will always be a print classifieds market, but it's fundamentally different. A perfect example is all of the dumb things I'm thinking of selling now that CL is here. I would never put an ad in Seven Days (or the Buyers Digest--they're really in trouble) for these items, but there's CL, right there. In 60 seconds I can publish a free ad that lots of people will see. Why wouldn't I do it?

CL is online technology working the way it's supposed to--it's empowering individuals and democratizing classified ads. It's unobtrusive and free and still manages to make a living for its shareholders. Sorry Seven Days. Online classifieds are not going to be your bread and butter.

I do have a request of the SD site: Please get them to make their news articles permalinked. If I want to refer to a SD article on Candleblog, I link to it, but when the new issue is published, the link goes to a different article. They really need to archive for about a year or so.

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Authored by: billsimmon on Monday, February 07 2005 @ 08:39 PM

oh, it looks like they actually did that in the redesign. never mind.

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Authored by: Ntodd on Monday, February 07 2005 @ 09:24 PM

Yeah, no archive was my number one gripe (as it was for other folks).

And as far as being SOL, I guess I agree. But how does Clist generate revenue? Is it a model that can be adapted?

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Authored by: Spine on Monday, February 07 2005 @ 09:35 PM

CL's revenue comes entirely from the Jobs section. Employers have to pay to place help-wanted ads. (I seem to remember hearing a figure of $50 per ad, but that might have changed.) For everyone else, CL is free free free.

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Authored by: billsimmon on Tuesday, February 08 2005 @ 06:19 AM

And CL only charges for the jobs sections in LA, San Francisco and NYC--everywhere else, BTV included, it's all free. Wikipedia's CL page is pretty comprehensive, check it out.

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Authored by: Ntodd on Tuesday, February 08 2005 @ 07:37 AM

Thannnnkyew!

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Authored by: cresmer on Wednesday, February 09 2005 @ 07:28 AM

Bill!
I've been following your Craigslist posts closely for a while now and am
finally weighing in. I'm Cathy Resmer, Seven Days writer, and member of
our loosely organized "web team." A few thoughts:

Come try to sell your stuff on the 7D site. As far as I know, we have free
on-line ads there now. See if you get a response. I agree, CL is really
convenient, and until now, the 7D site has been really not, but we're
trying to change that.

The archives are there now for everything published in 2005. Older issues
coming soon (thank God). We've been working on this redesign for a year
- we've only got one web-savvy tech guy on staff, and he's the art
director, so things move kinda slow. It's easy to forget, but this is still a
small town, in a small state, with limited resources to support an
alternative weekly newspaper.

NTodd noted above that I asked him to help us figure out what we can do
to make the 7D site better. It's true--I'm actively looking for any input I
can get. Other alt. weeklies have been devestated by loss of revenue from
CL, and we can't afford to lose our classifieds and still hand out a free
newspaper every week.

You mentioned up above that CL is "local," but though it's got users from
around here, it is in no way a local business. 7D is. The way I see it,
because of the way 7D makes its money (through advertising rather than
charging readers for a newspaper) the rise of CL will actually hurt local
businesses, local non-profits who we support each year, and people like
me, who rely on those ad dollars to pay our salaries. It's also bad for local
journalism. I think 7D provides a valuable service, especially to VT artists
and the arts organizations we cover. Those are the people who stand to
lose if CL undercuts our ad revenues.

These are just a few of my jumbled early morning thought. I'm not sure
how to solve this quandry, but I'm keenly interested in your suggestions.
If you like 7D and want to see it continue, please let me know what you
think we should do to remain relevant, useful, and solvent in this new
economic environment.

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Authored by: billsimmon on Wednesday, February 09 2005 @ 05:15 PM

Cathy,

Hey there, love your work. Of course I want to see 7D continue and I do want local businesses to thrive in general. I must admit I'm somewhat skeptical of the scale of the impact you're implying CL could have in little old Burlington. How much of 7D's income is derived from classifieds? As long as the paper has readership (a figure that should not be affected by CL) then you should still be able to sell ads. I guess I could see a paper like the Buyer's Digest getting a severe hit, but 7D has other revenue sources too, right (regular, non-classified ads)? Also, ebay has been around for years w/o wiping out print media "for sale" classified ads.

As I said before, there's also a big difference between print classifieds and online ads. If I had an apt. to rent, sure I'd post to CL, but I would be foolish to not also take out ads in 7D and the freeps. After all, not EVERYONE uses the net (yet).

Even allowing that CL will have a very negative impact on 7D's revenue, I don't really see what you can do about it. You can't make it go away and how can you compete with a free, easy service with huge name recognition? Fighting CL isn't the answer. Certainly making your own online classified ads free and easy would be good--the redesign really does look great, BTW--I spent some time there yesterday. Getting the word out to bloggers and the net-saavy is smart (seems like you're doing that). After that? I dunno, write Craig Newmark a letter and ask him really nicely not to compete with you in BTV?

Someone I was talking to recently tried to compare this situation to Barnes & Noble taking business away from local booksellers and the analogy just doesn't fly. If booksellers were being driven out by an online free 'zine library, then yes, I can see the comparison. I don't see the solution. The booksellers are just going to have to find a way to live without their 'zine revenue.

As far as other ideas, I would gladly plunk down 25 cents for my 7D on Wednesdays. It's certainly not the ads I get it for, it's the writing (and, I admit, the crossword). You could hold a pledge drive like VPT. I'd give a few bucks if it would mean less ads and more content. I would be willing to produce a short TV spot for the paper for free (that's my day job and I'm an "award winning filmmaker") but you'd still have to buy air time on the channels.

You guys have no serious (alt weekly) competition in the area and 70,000 readers (according to your site). If CL can put a nail in the 7D coffin, something is seriously wrong.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, February 16 2005 @ 09:37 AM

Bill!
Thanks so much for your thoughtful post and email last week. Sorry it
took me a week (eons in the blogosphere!) to respond. I was away this
past weekend at a bloggers conference in Chapel Hill North Carolina.
Fascinating. I went because I'm keenly interested in the local blogging
community they've managed to develop there. I don't know if you've been
keeping up with them, but they're doing some really innovative things in
NC, particularly with the Greensboro News & Record, and with building a
geographically linked blogging community, something I'd like to see
evolve here. But more on that later.

About CL--yeah, I think it is kinda like Barnes and Noble. When the big
chain stores first came here, I refused to shop there. But now they're
pretty much the only game in town, so unless I get something on-line,
that's where I go. I don't like it much, but eventually I guess you just
have to face facts and realize that this is how the business climate works
here, at least for now. I would much prefer to buy books at Bear Pond in
Montpelier, but for whatever reason, an equivalent store simply does not
exist here. So it goes.

I think CL (or some other internet service) will eventually replace the
classifieds in newspapers (which, by the way, account for a sizable portion
of our revenue at 7D). That seems inevitable, at least for the portion of
the population that has access to computers (for everyone else...well...but
the digital divide is yet another topic).The internet is just so much more
convenient to use, and you get results so much more quickly. Now that
people are beginning to trust the web with their money (on-line bill paying
and secure credit card transactions), and software developers are making
the applications more trustworthy and user friendly, I think it's just a
matter of time before people start using on-line marketplaces to do the
kind of business (and connecting) that many of them now do through
newspapers.

I guess the trick, then, is to become one of these marketplaces where
people go on-line, either to sell stuff or to trade ideas. My hope is that
Seven Days can become one, a site where a certain type of person (the
type who reads our paper already) can go to connect on-line with the
vibrant culture we already reflect in our newspaper. I think having a local
marketplace---rather than a generic CL type site--is valuable for the same
reasons I think local bookstores, or local stores in general are valuable.
And I think we may have a chance right now to be a Montpelier rather
than a Burlington (if we're still using the bookstore analogy). But that
window is closing fast.

Our job is designing a marketplace that people will want to use, and then
getting them there. This is difficult to do, for a variety of reasons, but it's
what I'm spending a lot of time thinking about. Our ad department has
been spurred to action because of CL and is making our site more
interactive on the business end. My interest is in developing the site as a
marketplace of ideas, where Vermonters (and others) can connect to VT
culture. Frankly, I'm not sure one can exist without the other, though I
suspect we'll find out soon.

We're really not competing with CL in the content department--I don't
think of us as competing with anyone, since no one is really going to offer
7D online but us. I guess I just feel that we could be doing what we're
doing better, and I want to see that happen.

Thanks for engaging in this dialogue with me. I have a bunch of ideas that
I hope to roll out soon at the 7D site re: content marketplace. If you have
any suggestions, I'm eager to hear them. And at some point I'd like to
talk to you about this local blogging community thing.

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Authored by: cresmer on Wednesday, February 16 2005 @ 09:48 AM

Duh. That anonymous post was me. Just noticed I used the phrase "keenly interested" twice, once in my first post, then again in my reply. I should probably come up with a new way to say I'm an obsessed, wild-eyed fanatic.

---
Don't give the devil a ride--he will want to drive.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, February 16 2005 @ 08:10 PM

Folks, please remember that we just run the infrastructure for CL here in San Francisco, and handle serious abuse.

People in a city run their craigslist themselves, by posting, and flagging away the bad stuff. We're trying to figure out better ways to give away more control over the site, doing some of the relevant software development now.

Thanks for the kind words!

Craig (craig@craigslist.org)

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