Do You Think Craig Newmark Cares?

I was reading some news this morning, and came across this post about Craigslist blocking Yahoo Pipes, and indirectly a mash-up for a company called Flippity.

There are cries abounding in all the major technology news sources. How could Craigslist block someone trying to use their data in new ways? Isn’t that what the web is all about? If you know anything about the owner of Craigslist, the answer is not just no, but hell no.

Craig Newmark did not start Craigslist to make money, or to have a cool app. If you read the story of the founding of his company, and his core values, it had nothing to do with making money or being “the next big thing.” He was looking for an easy, familiar way to connect buyers and sellers. It is remarkably simple, remarkably good, and is not in need of a raft of new features. This last part is just scandalous to developers in web land.

What I love about Craigslist is that even though it has achieved massive scale, the vision and the reality remain largely unchanged. If you bought or sold something on Craigslist three or seven years ago, the experience is still largely the same today.

Craigslist has one thing going for it that all of us that write software for a living crave: Acceptance by the marketplace of the vision of the product from the beginning. It is extremely rare, and I for one have no issues with them doing whatever they think is right for their product. It’s pretty clear that they have not been wrong a whole lot. Maybe they know best and should be entrusted with maintaining the vision.

Sacrilege, I know.