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One globe, one Craigslist, over a hundred communities

Craigslist is an online community of online communities, an Internet site that allows the globe to connect on both the international and local level. It is a non-commercial organization that believes in "net neutrality," and wants to help the individual have a voice in the everyday real-world society.

"Net neutrality" is a guiding ideal that preserves the openness and freedom of the Internet. The idea is to prevent discrimination; that the speed, service, and equipment an Internet-user chooses to use, or has access to, should not limit that users ability to access content. In today's worldwide economy, the desire to find a way to earn money from this open medium has lead believers of net neutrality to encourage Internet-users, and governments, not to take the freedom of the Web for granted.

The creator of Craigslist, Craig Newmark, is a charter member of the SavetheInternet.com Coalition, and provides a link to the site where users can learn about network neutrality. Internationally, Craigslist hosts community sites for 50 countries, including: Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, Costa Rica, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Peru, Poland, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, and the United States. Each site offers users local content, connecting people to information about activities, events, news, and politics in their community.

Users can posts on any number of topics and browse classifieds for housing, jobs, "for sale" ads, services, and gigs. The web pages also offer users links to discussion forums on topics ranging from pets to wine. A section for personal ads is also available. The top local communities for the United States are Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, New Orleans, Portland, San Diego, the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, and Washington D.C., but the site has communities for over 400 U.S. Cities.

Of course, when talking about the expansiveness of Craigslist, it is interesting to note that the site has managed to reach the stars. CEO of Craigslist, Jim Buckmaster, won an eBay auction for a light-years deep transmission into outer space. (The winning bid? Only one hundred and twenty-five dollars.) The Deep Space Communications Network (DSCN) beamed 2,049,215 postings - Craigslist ads - into space at 9:40a.m. on July 26, 2005 in conjunction with Discovery space shuttle launch at Cape Canaveral. It was the first private communications transmission of its kind.

Having reached outer space is by far no small accomplishment, but the real success story is perhaps that Craig Newmark wasn’t trying to start a business. Started in 1995, the site began merely as a way to keep the San Francisco Bay Area informed and able to share events. By 1999, the popularity of the site caused Newmark to stop working as a software engineer and to take up Craigslist full-time. By the next year, he had nine employees. Today, the non-commercial site has a staff of 24 people, over five billion views a month, and ranks 34th in page viewings among websites worldwide. It ranks 9th overall among U.S. websites. A majority of that popularity is due to its status as one of the top job posting boards in the world, with over 500,000 new job listings per month.

Although the company doesn't formally release information about finances or ownership, it did change to a for-profit organization in 1999 and still maintains a service mission for a non-corporate culture. Craigslist is by far the highest viewed site in English compared to the number of employees paid to maintain it.