Craig Newmark began the service in as an email distribution list to friends, featuring local events in the San Francisco Bay Area. It became a web-based service in and expanded into other classified categories. It started expanding to other U. In Craigslist listed seven hundred cities in 70 countries on its website and generated million visits per month.
Having observed people helping one another in friendly, social, and trusting communal ways on the Internet via the WELL , MindVox and Usenet , and feeling isolated as a relative newcomer to San Francisco, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark decided to create something similar for local events.
Most of the early postings were submitted by Newmark and were notices of social events of interest to software and Internet developers living and working in the San Francisco Bay Area. The number of subscribers and postings grew rapidly via manual advertising. There was no moderation and Newmark was surprised when people started using the mailing list for non-event postings.
This led to the addition of a jobs category. User demand for more categories caused the list of categories to grow. The initial technology encountered some limits, so by June Majordomo had been installed, and the mailing list "Craigslist" resumed operations. Community members started asking for a web interface. Newmark registered "craigslist. In the fall of , the name "List Foundation" was introduced, and Craigslist started transitioning to the use of this name.
In April , when Newmark learned of other organizations called "List Foundation", the use of this name was dropped. Craigslist was incorporated as a private for-profit company in By April , nine employees were working out of Newmark's San Francisco apartment.
