In the US, at least, if you want to find an apartment to rent, somebody to paint a room in your house, a used computer to buy, or if you have any of those things (or more) to offer, you’re likely to use Craigslist. It’s a free service that’s available in practically every local area in the US, and also many areas throughout the world. Worldwide coverage is much less complete than in the US, though. You might want to visit it today because it’s the birthday of Craig himself; Craig Newmark. He turns 71 today.
Newmark was born in New Jersey, in the US, and has described his boyhood self as “possible nerd patient zero.” He had a plastic pocket protector for his shirt, black-rimmed glasses with the nosepiece taped together, and was in the Physics Club. He discovered computer science in college, and graduated with BS and MS degrees in 1975 and 1977.
His first job in programming was with IBM, and he stayed for 17 years, and became a contract programmer after that. In the early 90s he found out about the World Wide Web, and by 1995 was compiling lists of local events that he emailed to friends. Either he or they found all the email to be tiresome, and he launched craigslist.org in 1996. That made it possible for others to post information too, and the site became his main hobby for the next three years. It got very popular very fast, and in 1999 he created Craigslist as a commercial company. He only ran it for a year, though, and handed the CEO role to Jim Buckmaster, who’s still in the same job.
Newmark stepped away from daily operations of Craigslist after stepping down from the CEO job, but he still occasionally steps in to handle support questions. So click “help” in Craigslist, you might be in touch with the founder himself.
To Newmark’s apparent surprise, Craigslist has made him very wealthy. As early as 2004 he started spending most of his time and attention on good ways to give away his money — by 2018 he’d given away more than $140 million. His philanthropy focuses on military veterans, women in technology, journalism, food security, and cybersecurity.
In his private life, Newmark lives modestly and doesn’t even own a car. He prefers to take public transportation, and his main hobby is now birding, which he does with his wife. Forbes magazine estimated in 2020 that he was a billionaire, but he’s responded that their figure is “bogus.” In any case, he’s comfortably well off, and all from a bunch of ads for used household goods.
