If I told you Craig from Craig’s List Agreed to an Interview..

Would you believe me?

Author:  Amy Armitage

There are certain personalities who have created a name for themselves in CyberLand and beyond who have my respect and admiration.  One of these people is Craig Newmark creator of the infamous Craig’s List!  Yes.. that’s right.. we talk ;)

*snaps fingers over shoulder

When I replied to his email this morning [he was seeking my advice about how to create a multi billion dollar empire] I hit him up with some confronting and hard hitting questions..

He chose to ignore those and went for the fluff option, and it is with great pride and pleasure that I welcome Craig to Lunartics.

How many servers are used to run Craig’s List and for the geeky readers, tell us about the OS you use, coding languages you use or prefer.

Around 120 generic pc servers running suse linux, mysql, apache, and modPerl

I was at a conference last year where Craigslist.com was mentioned as an example of an ugly website, yet it is hugely popular and successful. Do you get upset when you hear this said about Craig’s List?

Some described our look as the visual equivalent of a pipe wrench, intended and taken as a compliment.

There are some people who make judgements, not knowing much about usability, etc., no big deal.

What’s more important in your opinion?  Usability or design?

Usability.

Is Craig’s List designed with SEO or user experience in mind?

Not SEO, but very much usability: keeping things simple.

I was reading an interview with you where you mentioned your role in customer service consistently.  Do you still work in a customer service role at Craig’s List on a daily basis?  Why do you love it so much?

I do full time customer service, and more.  Needs to be done, and I owe it to our community.

I also noted you moderate and manage your forum community.  What are the biggest challenges you have faced running busy community forums?

When people bicker constantly and get nasty, particularly regarding animal sales.

Social marketing seems to have a lot of influence over the last 12 months on natural search engine rankings.  Blogs particularly seem to be a wonderful resource to communicate and get indexed ;)  I noticed you have a personal blog.  Do you write this for SEO, to keep in touch with your community or for another reason?

To connect with community, and to indulge myself.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

I don’t plan to grow up.

Your music interests range from Leonard Cohen to Kinky Friedman.  If you were locked in a room with no electronic stimulation and only a choice of listening to Marilyn Manson or Hansen (mmm bop) which would you choose?

Probably Manson.

For our budding webmasters out there, what’s the best advice you can give them on running a profitable and high traffic web site?

Treat people like you want to be treated.

When you started out and were examining web hosts closely, what were the major factors that influenced your choice of web host?

Do they support user CGI? (big issue back then)

Customer service?

Imagine overnight the internet is gone.  OMG what would you do?!

You’ve blown my mind.

* Yes.. a lot a lot of people say that to me Craig ;)

Of all the people you correspond with online, if you had to choose 1 person only you could keep in touch with.  Who would it be and why?

Maybe Jimmy Wales, wikipedia, or Ellen Miller, Sunlight Foundation.

Imagine all the spammers in the world were in one [massive] room and you could choose the best punishment or death for them.  What would it be?

They could only read their own stuff.

What’s your favorite made up word?

kweejibo

Damnit I should have asked him what kweejibo means..

Thanks Craig!!  You are so awesome :D