Imagine what it was like to be Dr. Kleenex. You invent a modern miracle, an inexpensive paper handkerchief, and suddenly you become the person to blame for America's disposable culture, or praised for a more convenient life.
There never was a Dr. Kleenex -- the product was created by a team of researchers in Kimberly-Clark laboratories in the 1920s. But there is a real Craig in Craigslist, Craig Newmark, and lately he has been looking at life beyond his little list that has become one of the most popular U.S. Web sites.
It is also a site that is deeply tied up with the fate of newspapers -- indeed, many in the newspaper industry blame Newmark by name for the downturn in their classified advertising business -- as well as real estate and the Internet-fueled marketplace.
An ardently no-frills, user-sensitive site, Craigslist has, in the estimation of the company's chief executive, Jim Buckmaster, generated more than 600 million free classified listings for people. (Even though nearly all listings on Craigslist remain free, it has added modest fees for job listings and real estate brokers in some big cities, and it generates an estimated $80 million to $100 million in annual revenue from those fees, with a staff, based in San Francisco, of 25, including Newmark.)
In the United States and beyond, Craigslist is digging even deeper into classified ad markets. Once, the announcement that Craigslist was expanding meant adding new cities like Miami, Minneapolis and Philadelphia. Today it means towns like Janesville, Wisconsin (population: 60,000), and Farmington, New Mexico (population: 38,000), as well as Cebu, the Philippines, and, by personal request of Newmark, Ramallah in the West Bank.
In the face of this expansion, Newmark now wants to become more of a public figure, capitalizing on his success to promote personal causes, which include...

More...