The Man Behind Craigslist: Craig Newmark

Craig Newmark is the founder of the famed Craigslist website and the community involved Craigslist Foundation organization. He was born on December 6, 1952 in Morristown, New Jersey. After attending Morristown High School he went to Case Western Reserve University where he earned a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science. He currently resides in San Francisco’s Cole Valley and is an active employee of his own Craigslist.

With over 30 years of experience, Craig Newmark is currently a senior Web-oriented software engineer. He spent 17 years working for IBM and years with Bank of America, which helped him get to the position he’s in today. Since starting Craigslist, he has continued to gain knowledge in online community growth and customer service. He works mostly in the customer service department at his own company, Craigslist, today. He describes himself as a nerd who grew up wearing taped-together thick black glasses, a pocket protector and pants which were likely too short. He is obsessed with customer service within the Craigslist community and rarely takes a day off from work.

When Newmark started Craigslist in 1995, it was simply an email chain to friends. He was working at Schwab and wanted to give his friends a link to everything going on in the San Francisco Bay Area. With more and more people hearing about it and becoming interested, it quickly grew into an online business phenomenon. By 1999, he was able to quit his job and work full time on Craigslist. It serves a non-commercial community need, which newspaper classifieds just didn’t address. The forums and classifieds on Craigslist were created by Newmark to help people find basic needs like housing, jobs, goods and services. He developed it with the ideal most people are relatively "good" and there is a undeniably field of trust within the site, which all participants engage within.

While Newmark has certainly developed a great phenomenon within Craigslist, his mission is not solely to be a successful entrepreneur. One of his main career goals is to advocate the position of keeping the Web free of charge. He is a supporter of NewAssignment.net, which promotes the issue and produces investigative stories online. He’s also involved with other community issues like Middle East Peace movements, participatory journalism movements and blogging. He sits on the boards of Sunlight Foundation, OneVoice, FactCheckED and VotoLatino. Featured in the Associated Press, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Business Week, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine and Esquire Magazine, this software guru gains a great deal of media attention.

Fans of Newmark can gain more access to the entrepreneur’s life by visiting his personal blog (www.cnewmark.com) or his twitter account. Craig Newmark blogs about various newsworthy events and gives his opinion or critique, throughout the site. He also posts photos and other entertaining pieces for readers to enjoy. Blog posts by Newmark have been dedicated in the past to topics like his personal Wikipedia entry, "A Day In The Life...", interviews of Newmark by famous news people, his resume and links to his personal Facebook page. While the blog is likely an attempt to inform the public of his true credentials (discrediting any gossip printed on him), it allows fans to fully see the underbelly of an Internet mogul. It is virtually unedited and unscripted, allowing those interested in his success to see exactly what he’s all about.