How many of us have spent a large portion of our summer searching craigslist for a perfect apt with no broker’s fee in the noho area?
How many of us have spent all of September searching craigslist for a great couch and a flat screen TV to furnish our brand new apartment we just found on craigslist in august?
I bet I could continue going through every month of the year and have most of you nodding your head in agreement. Though I’m sure you all know Craigslist.org is “Local classifieds and forums for more than 550 cities in over 50 countries worldwide – community moderated, and largely free.” Throughout this course we have discussed many times how the Internet has created a world where we never have to leave the house. For some reason I am obsessed with craigslist. Even though I’m settled in an amazing apartment that I never want to leave I find myself checking craigslist constantly to see what’s out there. As far as new media is concerned I find craigslist to be particularly interesting because it functions wholly for the needs and wants of the community. Though it was established as a for profit domain 1999 it functions primarily as a relatively non-corporate non-commercial environment. Another thing I find interesting about craigslist is that it manages to evade one of the most frequent criticisms of online social networks and communities. The final transaction does not occur online. You meet face to face with the person that you have created a relationship with online in order to establish the deal.
I find craigslist to be a brilliant idea and love to explore it and how it functions so successfully. At least now when I find myself searching craigslist for an apt I can now claim to have a reason….My NMRS Travelogue.
4 Comments
Your first sentence sucked me right into your post. I was abroad for almost the entire summer so finding an apartment was my number 1 priority when I got back home in August. I was on it for hours and hours looking for an affordable place in a great location which, by the way, does not exist. I used to think that contacting someone on Craigslist then meeting up with them was really shady but I ended up going it twice. I guess my standards lower in desperate situations. It’s the most aggravating when you find the listings you KNOW are scams but you still cross your fingers and hope that maybe it’s not when in fact they are ALWAYS and DEFINITELY scams. I’m starting to vent haha.
I think Craigslist is a great site to do your second travelogue on. I really liked the fact that you brought up the point about the final transaction happening face-to-face. It’s funny because it’s such a modern way of dealing with finding apartments, jobs, and buying random things; definitely “new media,” but in the end it comes down to the oldest form of communication – mono a mono. I think you could definitely delve deep into the social implications and do some good research on it. I’m looking forward to it!
I too fell victim to living on Craigslist this summer. I even had to work through Craigslist during my internship. I worked for an online auction house, iGavel (you may recognize my boss as the guy in the bow tie if you’ve ever watched Antiques Roadshow on PBS). They didn’t want their company to be affiliated with some of the “lower class” items they would sell for their landlord so one of my awesome summer tasks was selling action figures and comic books on Craigslist and EBay. When I wasn’t doing that, I was, of course, looking for an apartment. Most of us are familiar with the real estate and for sale sections but Craigslist has so much to offer. It seems like it’s going to be a really interesting site to explore.
I literally just found a job using craigslist. I searched for jobs in the village, and found several restaurants in need of a waitress/hostess. On my way to class, I dropped off my application, had an interview, and boom! I’m employed. All this, and I didn’t even have to go out of my way, since it’s on 3rd ave, on the way to New Media. I love the internet.
B”H
Craigslist is a web phenomenon that leaves executives and shareholders of the old media scratching their heads, before they finally try to play catch up. With newspapers scrambling to embrace the Internet, as their circulations tumble lower and lower, they must be confounded by craigslist’s ability to deliver quality global classified ads for free. For at least tens of years, classifieds have been a source of strong income for newspapers; they required specific employees to manage this process and craigslist manages to to act quickly and efficiently with little involvement of a human middle man. Welcome to the Age of We Want it NOW.