We’ve often thought of Craiglist as being many things- place to buy furniture, place to look for apartments, and a place to try and find casual sex, but there’s one thing we never considered it to be- killer of newspapers. According to a report by consulting agency Classified Agency, Craigslist is taking away at least $50 to $65 million dollars in job ad losses alone from Bay Area newspapers. That’s a lot of money and that doesn’t even include things like personals, old ratty couch postings, or rental listings. Considering how much money classified listings brings in for newspapers, that’s a big deal. As Craiglist is expanding into other cities, the report warns newspapers in those cities to deal with the possible threat that Craiglist could be. Who woulda thunk it -- Craigslist is the Wal-Mart of the classified world, except without the exploitation of workers, destruction of downtown areas, and not even close to being evil.

To show just what an effect Craigslist has on job classifieds, the report (which can’t be linked to, only purchased online) shows that last month, Craig’s had 12,200 job listings while all four Bay Area papers (the Chron, the Oakland Tribune, the San Jose Mercury and the Contra Costa Times) had a combined total of 4,900 job listings. That’s huge and also no surprise. We’ve been unemployed a lot these past ten years (a lot) and we can say that every job, every job interview, every whiff of a job, have all come through Craigslist. The Chron -- nada. It’s almost not even worth looking through the Sunday Classifieds as none of the jobs there are ever really that good. And you can’t beat the usability of just responding to a job listing by clicking on the e-mail address provided with the listing. The report also says that Craig’s has achieved such a thorough domination in job listings that both the Chron and the Mercury post their job postings on Craig’s because they get better results that way.

Just another reason we guess why Newsweek named Craig as qualifying for their “Who’s Next 2005” write-up, even giving our local boy a story all to himself. Oh yeah, and Craig, love the slippers!

Image courtesy of Newsweek