Craig Newmark is the soft-spoken man behind the nationwide network of online community sites known as craigslist, which feature back-to-basics bulletin-style classifieds, as well as community discussion boards.
The sites have made a mark on real estate, with more brokers and agents using them as another place on the Web to expose their listings, and more consumers turning to the Internet for real estate information.
On craigslist, visitors can look for a job, an apartment, a house, sofa, Saturday night date, art class, Portuguese lessons, a bass player for a garage band or reconnect with the person they flirted with on the subway a few nights ago.
Newmark founded the first craigslist site in San Francisco in 1995, and now serves as chief customer service representative for the online community, which has expanded to include 190 craigslist sites in 50 states and 35 countries.
Craigslist boasts more than 10 million users per month, and receives more than 3 billion page views per month.
Newmark will speak during Real Estate Connect in New York City, Jan. 11-13, 2006.
Here are his answers to a set of questions posed by Inman News:
Panel or session at Connect: The World is Changing: A Look at the Industry from the Outside.
What type of home were you born in and where?
Boarding house, Morristown, N.J.
What style of home do you live in and when did you buy it?
A reasonably nice shack, purchased in May.
What worries keep you awake at night?
The long-term effects of national debt.
Describe your dream home:
I finally get my own parking place.
What lesson did you learn in the last year?
It used to be that the victors wrote the history books; now we all get to.
Also, from Times: craigslist is a marketplace in the ancient mode, chaotic, unruly and vividly human.
Who is your hero?
Leonard Cohen.
What was your first job?
Architecture and software at IBM in Boca Raton, Fla.
What would your second career choice be?
Studying complexity theory.
Which daily newspaper do you read and which section do you read first?
San Francisco Chronicle, front section.
Where did you spend your last vacation?
What’s a “vacation”?
What professional accomplishment are you most proud of?
Craigslist.
What is your favorite technology device or software application?
Linux.
What kind of music do you listen to?
Leonard Cohen, Fiona Apple, etc.
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