The Webolution of Craigslist
Craigslist was originally a website founded in 1995 as an advertising company intended to advertise jobs and create a forum to upload resumes. Over the past 20+ years, Craigslist has become increasingly popular and its demographics have expanded to more than just jobs and resumes. While that aspect is still vital to Craigslist, there are many new categories and subcategories people all over the world can explore.
Using the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, I was able too look at Craigslist and how it has changed over the years. The first screenshot I looked at was from March 2, 2000 from the San Francisco Bay Area. At the time, Craigslist had four main categories; housing, internet jobs, stuff, and jobs. There was also a place to upload your resume under the job section. Clearly, the focus of Craigslist was on employment and providing people a forum to find and post jobs. This year was the most traffic the site had seen since it started most likely due to the turn of the century and the accessibility to computers and the internet.
The second screenshot I looked at was from February 4, 2005 which included much more extensive categories. While it kept the original four, there was also the introduction of the “personals” forum which included things such as platonic, women seeking men, casual encounters, and missed connections. This was part of the growing community aspect which featured things like volunteer opportunities, classes, and lost and found. I found this community aspect interesting because Craigslist really branched out from the workplace environment to more of a personalized forum.
I then checked what Craigslist looked like 8 years later on March 14, 2013. There seemed to be the same amount of categories but a much greater collection of subcategories. Most of these were found under the discussion forum and the for sale forum once again contributing to the community feel of the website. Another interesting addition I found was a new sidebar that included tabs that said, “help, faq, abuse, legal” and “avoid scam and fraud”. I believe Craigslist included this because as their traffic and popularity grew, so did the abuse of the website leaving many of the users vulnerable to fraud or misuse. While site traffic decreased slightly this year, it was still very popular among internet users and was seeing growth in different areas of the website.
The last screenshot I looked at was from February 5, 2016. Everything from the layout to the categories were very similar to that of 2013. This is probably because the creators and engineers found their niche and what worked for them so they then decided to perfect the user-friendliness of the website.
After researching, I found that the difference from 2000–2005 and 2013–2016 were slight but the changes from 2000 to 2016 was vastly different. This is most likely due the fact that in 2000 having a computer was not something that everyone expected whereas in 2016 having a computer is similar to owning a car. The possession of computers then made it easier for people to connect across the country and Craigslist was able to capitalize on the fact that people wanted to connect for jobs, friendships, or sales. It will be interesting to see where Craigslist goes from here and to see if they expand their focus something besides their current niche and target audience.
