Shirky, a site by Clay Shirky states that Craigslist killed the newspaper classified ads but this is a common assumption that does not hold true. Craigslist did not kill the newspaper classified ads but the newspaper classified ads are most definitely doomed.
Why? Because paying customers already moved on from paying high amounts of money to get their ads posted on the daily newspaper as compared to the fees paid for ads posted on online classifieds. Craigslist is just one of the many ad sites but it does not cater to a focused market. Other sites such as Monster.com, Cars.com and Realtor.com do and they get more listings and these sites are paid advertising unlike with Craigslist where posters don’t pay a dime.
Newspapers just simply failed to evolve and you can’t point your finger to Craigslist as newspapers allowed these classifieds to be taken away from them since the launch of web browsing.
In my personal opinion, I think that newspaper companies only complain because they are loosing money to websites such as Craigslist. It’s cheaper and easier to connect to a webpage in todays world than it is to go out and purchase a newspaper.
Craigslist does charge on certain classified listings but its still a better alternative than a newspaper. A newspaper only reaches out to a local area of readers while Craigslist reaches out to a potential audience of the entire world.
I think that the internet, has reinvented almost all human activity and because the media is digital, it can be corrupted. Left as it is now and not regulated in some way, people for fun will continue to undermine what were profitable industries-newspapers, artists, musicians etc as peer-to-peer networks have done. These people may be overseas or not but they make available to what was a paying public, movies software, music and more. This can be stopped but it will take governments to want to do it.