This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on 9 January 2023. Craig Newmark began the service in 1995 as an email distribution list to friends, featuring local events in the San Craigslist tortilla machine Bay Area.

It became a web-based service in 1996 and expanded into other classified categories. It started expanding to other U. Canadian cities in 2000, and now covers 70 countries. The number of subscribers and postings grew rapidly via manual advertising. There was no moderation and Newmark was surprised when people started using the mailing list for non-event postings. People trying to get technical positions filled found that the list was a good way to reach people with the skills they were looking for.

This led to the addition of a jobs category. Majordomo had been installed and the mailing list “Craigslist” resumed operations. Community members started asking for a web interface. In the fall of 1998, the name “List Foundation” was introduced and Craigslist started transitioning to the use of this name. Newmark learned of other organizations called “List Foundation”, the use of this name was dropped. Craigslist was incorporated as a private for-profit company in 1999. Around the time of these events, Newmark realized the site was growing so fast that he could stop working as a software engineer and devote his full attention to running Craigslist.

In January 2000, current CEO Jim Buckmaster joined the company as lead programmer and CTO. The website expanded into nine more U. 2000, four in 2001 and 2002 each, and 14 in 2003. 25 to post job openings on the New York and Los Angeles pages. On the same day, a new section called “Gigs” was added, where low-cost and unpaid jobs can be posted free. In March 2008, Spanish, French, Italian, German, and Portuguese became the first non-English languages Craigslist supported. Craigslist is the leading classifieds service in any medium.

Craigslist home page collectively receive more than 300,000 postings per day just in the “for sale” and “housing” sections as of October 2011. In 2009, Craigslist operated with a staff of 28 people. In December 2006, at the UBS Global Media Conference in New York, Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster told Wall Street analysts that Craigslist had little interest in maximizing profit, and instead preferred to help users find cars, apartments, jobs and dates. Craigslist’s main source of revenue is paid job ads in select American cities. The company does not formally disclose financial or ownership information. Fortune has described their revenue model as “quasi-socialist”, citing their focus on features for users regardless of profitability. Some fans of Craigslist expressed concern that this development would affect the site’s longtime non-commercial nature.