Craigslist is one of the most popular websites for local classifieds and forums for 450 cities worldwide. It is free to use, and non-commercialized.

History
Before Craigslist became one of the top ranking internet sites used to find anything and everything in your local community and beyond, it was just a small undertaking by a man named Craig Newmark in 1995. Initially, Craig began the site as a way to inform people about events happening in the San Francisco area. It did not take long for Craig’s idea to take off, and as the site’s popularity soared, it expanded to include not just events, but jobs, apartment listings, and classified ads. Newmark also wrote software that would allow people’s e-mail addresses to be linked to postings, an innovation which really added a whole new dimension to the site. Soon, it became clear that this idea needed a suitable name. Originally, Craig wanted to call it “sf-events”, but his friends decided a more personal touch would better correspond with the down-to-earth nature of the site. Thus, www.Craigslist.org was born.

With the addition of job listings to Craigslist came a massive increase in the amount of users who found that this was an excellent method to find employment. In 1997, Craig was asked if he would like to incorporate banner ads into the site as a way to create profit. He declined, saying that he would like to keep Craigslist free of commercial incentive. “Some things should be about money, some shouldn't, and I make enough doing contract programming.” By 1999, Newmark needed to fully devote himself to Craigslist in order to keep up with the increasing demand, and also hired nine others employees whom ran the site from Craig’s house in San Francisco.

Road To Success
Soon after its debut, this network started catching on by word of mouth around the bay area, and became a popular way for someone in the software developers community to find qualified potential employees. Once this trend was established, Craigslist started a list called “jobs” which became popular outside the developers community, and other employers began using Craigslist to post for all sorts of different jobs. This became Craigslist's first big success.

Craigslist facilitates these listings whilst maintaining total anonymity of the user, which prevents users personal information from being posted where anyone could access it. Also, access to these listings is always free, so there are no catch-22's or memberships to subscribe to. Users do not even have to register to use these services. This could arguably be its greatest appeal. With the growing menace of identity theft and Internet-based fraud, Craigslist has fostered a simple yet ingenious way of guaranteeing privacy whist promoting communication between strangers.

Users started demanding other list categories be included, such as apartment listings, real estate, personal ads and other items and services. Each new list category led to greater and greater popularity. Soon demand for new Craigslists surfaced in other cities, and now there is a Craigslist in every major city in the United States and across the globe. Each list is it's own “community” which localizes the goods and services so that people can actually meet in person. This is integral to its business model, which relies on the establishment of person-to-person communication via anonymous listings.

There is also a strong argument that the utter simplicity of Craigslist is the real reason behind its seemingly universal acceptance. Rather than constantly tweak and alter the layout and general “feel” of the page, they have instead embraced a much simpler and stable list structure which can be navigated by anyone who can read. E-mail addresses aren't even required; for the technologically impaired phone listings are available. There are many people who embrace the services of craigslist over other similar networking clients such as Ebay due to this fact. To sell something on Ebay, one requires an E-mail address, credit card, and the knowhow to set it all up. To sell that same thing on Craigslist, all one would need is a phone number. Also, Ebay charges commission on sellers for items sold, whereas Craigslist only charges for real estate listing in the New York City and Los Angeles area. This means more access fore a wider demographic, which can appeal to all sorts of groups and companies within the community

Another key aspect to the success of Craigslist lies in the “grass-roots” mentality of it's CEO Jim Buckmaster. Known to be strongly anti-establishment, he prefers not to give in to the deep pocketbooks of commercial advertising firms, and rather fosters a “pro-user” environment, focusing on developing more lists and improving aspects of the user interface. This minimizes the appearance of ads within the website, and keeps users coming back.

Future Plans
Future plans for Craigslist center on expanding the number of ad sites. Last year, Craigslist expanded its number of sites by 112 and now has over 450. Foreign sites in local languages are the next step foreseen by CEO Jim Buckmaster.
Craigslist is also looking for a new corporate headquarters. The company is currently run from a Victorian House in San Francisco. Craigslist hopes to add more staff to the 25 currently working there and move to a more appropriate corporate headquarters.
Craigslist is looking to add video attachments to their adds in the future. Current adds can feature photographs and text only.
Founder Craig Newmark thinks that the future of Craigslist centers on being serious about customer service, expanding to new cities, and being watchful over people who might use the service for unlawful activities. He views his website as a public service and takes pride in the fact that the company has no debt and isn’t beholden to anyone.

EBAY currently has a 25% stake in Craigslist but there are no plans for an initial public offering of stock or other expansion of the business.