Founder of Craigslist in the Spotlight of Bloomberg Game Changers

Wednesday, 23 March 2011 23:22

This week’s "Bloomberg Game Changers" features a revealing interview with Craig Newmark, the multimillionaire founder of Craigslist, who offers insight on the founding of one of the most popular Web sites in the world and the biggest issues he’s faced as its creator.

Through commentary from Newmark and leading industry experts, the episode profiles the reserved Internet pioneer who shuns the spotlight and has defied the traditional Silicon Valley road to riches.

Newmark began Craigslist back in 1995 as an email distribution list of friends, featuring local events in the San Francisco Bay Area. Today, that simple online community bulletin board has grown exponentially, generating more than 20 billion page views per month.

But even with this enormous success, Newmark has shown little interest in power or profit, refusing to run ads on the site and rejecting a takeover attempt by eBay. Most recently, Newmark found himself at the center of a public controversy focused on Craigslist's personals ads that nearly destroyed the company's reputation.

Additional interviews include:

· David Vinjamuri, Professor of Marketing at NYU and author of "Accidental Branding"
· Christina Murphy, founder of San Francisco-based CM Recruiting
· Mark Rasch, co-founder of Secure IT Experts
· Peter Zollman, classified advertising expert and founder of AIM Group
· Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism
· Matt Zimmerman, Senior Staff Attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, focusing on free speech and privacy law