Paean to CL : That's craigslist to the rest of you

Kathy Sierra writes about user communities, especially passionate users, and pointed the way to danah boyd's lecture, if you had customers under 40 or were working on building communities. (aside: what's with 40 as the cut off age, anyway, she said at the age of 39 years, 11 months and 20 days old, will the internet go poof next friday?)

Wherein I found this paragraph,

As it grew, people still knew that there was this person Craig somewhere who was a friend of a friend and that he cared about the system. Craig does exist. His title is "Customer Service Rep." Although he founded this site and has hired many employees, he's still deeply invested in understanding what his users are doing. He reads email all day, responds directly to concerns. He watches what people do with the site and develops to make their lives easier. The site is infused with Craig's personality, passion and quirks.

Now danah's essay/lecture is a wonderful read, and I found myself nodding my head as I read it - in agreement, not somnolence - go read it in full, go read what Kathy's saying as well, for here, in this post, I'm only going to talk about Craigslist. And Craig. As a passionate CLer.

I moved to Chicago in Summer 2002 to start my new job at the Institute of Design. Other than one friend in a far northern suburb and one in a far southern suburb, I knew no one other than coworkers (and maybe a 120 students). Until, a few months in, I stumbled onto CL, and not just Craigslist, but the Open Forum discussion board - ChiOpFo, as it was fondly known - and became funny_person. "Funny" made friends - seemed like anyone who worked in the 'Loop' or thereabouts, or at least professionals, whose desk jobs didn't 'challenge' them enough in the course of the day, kept a window to the world open -  to bitch and vent and rant and rave, or just discuss the weather and what we ate for lunch. Sometimes, like during the summer, when school was out, but staff was in, we played Scrabble by email. It was our equivalent of IM. And a welcome dose of sanity in an often chaotic, crazy workplace.

We met socially in bars and I made friends. I met my broker, my banker, my accountant and bartender. No candlestickmaker. But close, I did meet the young gentleman who gave up two evenings a week to drive up from the suburbs to the city to teach me how to drive his Jeep Cherokee and ensure I received my driver's license. Among other things.

Anyway, we found a community, I met NYOpFo members for lunch when I was looking at NYC as a possible new city to move to, they told me what life was like in the Big Apple. I live in San Francisco.

When eBay bought a share, there was weeping and wailing and much gnashing of teeth to use an old, but apt cliche. That was my first email interaction with Craig - we had Craig sightings of course, when 'craig' with a little degree symbol, would show up on the boards and say "Just ignore the troll, folks" and many of us swooned, if it was our thread. Just because it was fun to do so. And because Craig, THE Craig of Craigslist, would bother to read, and comment one little thread. Think about it.

What danah writes about, I have 'experienced'. We were fans, we were faithful community members, we would defend him. After the eBay buyout there were people proposing everyone donating $1 a member if Craig needed the money.  If I were to meet Craig somewhere, even today, I would faint. Or lose my poise. Whatever, I'd go up to him and say, Craig, thank you, I'm funny of chiopfo. Thank you for a community of friends. Thank you for a social life. Thank you for the affordable apartment I scored in Nob Hill. Thank you for the excellent PC repairman today. Thank you for your List, Craig.

I like to believe that he'd know me. One of how many hundreds of thousands of members from that community?

Think about that. And read danah's and Kathy's posts again.

Comments

[Alan Gutierrez]

What an inspiring post for anyone who works on blogging or social neworking software.

[niti bhan]

The communities' fanaticism? It can have it's pros and cons...