Craigslist (stylized as craigslist) is an American classified advertisements website with sections devoted to jobs, housing, for sale, items wanted, services, community service, gigs, résumés, and discussion forums.

Craig Newmark began the service in 1995 as an email distribution list to friends, featuring local events in the San Francisco Bay Area. It became a web-based service in 1996 and expanded into other classified categories. It started expanding to other U.S. cities in 2000, and now covers 70 countries.

In March 2008, Spanish, French, Italian, German, and Portuguese became the first non-English languages Craigslist supported.^[5] As of August 9, 2012, over 700 cities and areas in 70 countries had Craigslist sites.^[6] Some Craigslist sites cover large regions instead of individual metropolitan areas—for example, the U.S. states of Delaware and Wyoming, the Colorado Western Slope, the California Gold Country, and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan are among the locations with their own Craigslist sites.^[7]

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.^[8][9] In early 1995, he began an email distribution list to friends. 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.

Soon, word of mouth led to rapid growth. The number of subscribers and postings grew rapidly. There was no moderation and Newmark was surprised when people started using the mailing list for non-event postings.^[10] People trying to get technical positions filled found that the list was a good way to reach people with the skills they were looking for. 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 1995 Majordomo had been installed and the mailing list "Craigslist" resumed operations. Community members started asking for a web interface. Newmark registered "craigslist.org", and the website went live in 1996.^[10]

In the fall of 1998, the name "List Foundation" was introduced and Craigslist started transitioning to the use of this name. In April 1999, when Newmark learned of other organizations called "List Foundation", the use of this name was dropped. Craigslist incorporated as a private for-profit company in 1999.^[8] Around the time of these events, Newmark realized the site was growing so fast that he could stop working as a software engineer and devote his full attention to running Craigslist. By April 2000, there were nine employees working out of Newmark's San Francisco apartment.^[11]

In January 2000, current CEO Jim Buckmaster joined the company as lead programmer and CTO. Buckmaster contributed the site's multi-city architecture, search engine, discussion forums, flagging system, self-posting process, homepage design, personals categories, and best-of-Craigslist feature. He was promoted to CEO in November 2000.^[12]

The website expanded into nine more U.S. cities in 2000, four in 2001 and 2002 each, and 14 in 2003. On August 1, 2004, Craigslist began charging $25 to post job openings on the New York and Los Angeles pages. On the same day, a new section called "Gigs" was added, where low-cost and unpaid jobs can be posted free.

The site serves more than 20 billion^[13] page views per month, putting it in 72nd place overall among websites worldwide and 11th place overall among websites in the United States (per Alexa.com on June 28, 2016), with more than 49.4 million unique monthly visitors in the United States alone (per Compete.com on January 8, 2010). With more than 80 million new classified advertisements each month, Craigslist is the leading classifieds service in any medium.

The site receives more than 2 million new job listings each month, making it one of the top job boards in the world.^[14][15] Craigslist also dominates the U.S. rental housing market, with millions of new listings every month.^[16] The 23 largest U.S. cities listed on the Craigslist home page collectively receive more than 300,000 postings per day just in the "for sale" and "housing" sections as of October 2011.^[17] The classified advertisements range from traditional buy/sell ads and community announcements to personal ads.

In 2009, Craigslist operated with a staff of 28 people.^[18]

In December 2006, at the UBS Global Media Conference in New York, Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster told Wall Street analysts that Craigslist had little interest in maximizing profit, and instead preferred to help users find cars, apartments, jobs and dates.^[19][20]

Craigslist's main source of revenue is paid job ads in select American cities. The company does not formally disclose financial or ownership information. Analysts and commentators have reported varying figures for its annual revenue, ranging from $10 million in 2004, $20 million in 2005, and $25 million in 2006 to possibly $150 million in 2007.^[21][22][23]

On August 13, 2004, Newmark announced on his blog that auction giant eBay had purchased a 25% stake in the company from a former employee.^[24] Some fans of Craigslist expressed concern that this development would affect the site's longtime non-commercial nature. As of April 2012, there have been no substantive changes to the usefulness, or the non-advertising nature of the site; neither banner ads, nor charges for a few services provided to businesses.

The company was believed to be owned principally by Newmark, Buckmaster and eBay (the three board members). eBay owned approximately 25%, and Newmark is believed to own the largest stake.^[7][23][25]

In April 2008, eBay announced it was suing Craigslist to "safeguard its four-year financial investment". eBay claimed that in January 2008, Craigslist executives took actions that "unfairly diluted eBay's economic interest by more than 10%".^[26] Craigslist filed a counter-suit in May 2008 to "remedy the substantial and ongoing harm to fair competition" that Craigslist claimed was constituted by eBay's actions as Craigslist shareholders; the company claimed that it had used its minority stake to gain access to confidential information, which it then used as part of its competing service Kijiji.^[27][28]

On June 19, 2015, eBay Inc. announced that it would divest its stake back to Craigslist for an undisclosed amount, and settle its litigation with the company. The move came shortly before eBay's planned spin-off of PayPal, and an effort to divest other units to focus on its core business.^[27]

The Swedish luxury marketplace website Jameslist.com received a lawsuit filed on July 11, 2012^[29] which among unspecified damages also asked for a complete shutdown of Jameslist.com ^[30] As a consequence, the young company was forced to rename to JamesEdition.

As of 2012, mashup sites such as padmapper.com and housingmaps.com were overlaying Craigslist data with Google Maps and adding their own search filters to improve usability. In June 2012, Craigslist changed its terms of service to disallow the practice. In July 2012, Craigslist filed a lawsuit against padmapper.com.^[31] Following the shutdown of Padmapper.com, some users complained that the service was useful to them and therefore should have remained intact.^[32]

Over the years Craigslist has become a very popular online destination for arranging for dates and sex.^{[33][34][35][36][37]} The personals section allows for postings that are for "strictly platonic", "dating/romance", and "casual encounters".^{[33][34][36][37]}

The site is considered particularly useful by lesbians and gay men seeking to make connections, because of the service's free and open nature and because of the difficulty of otherwise finding each other in more conservative areas.^[38]

In 2005, San Francisco Craigslist's men seeking men section was attributed to facilitating sexual encounters and was the second most common correlation to syphilis infections.^[38] The company has been pressured by San Francisco Department of Public Health officials, prompting Jim Buckmaster to state that the site has a very small staff and that the public "must police themselves".^[38] The site has, however, added links to San Francisco City Clinic and STD forums.^[38]

On March 22, 2018, Craigslist discontinued its "Personals" section in the United States in response to the passing of the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA), which removes Section 230 safe harbours for interactive services knowingly involved in illegal sex trafficking. The service stated that "US Congress just passed HR 1865, 'FOSTA', seeking to subject websites to criminal and civil liability when third parties (users) misuse online personals unlawfully.

Any tool or service can be misused. We can’t take such risk without jeopardizing all our other services, so we are regretfully taking craigslist personals offline. To the millions of spouses, partners, and couples who met through craigslist, we wish you every happiness!"^[39]

Advertisements for "adult" (previously "erotic") services were initially given special treatment, then closed entirely on September 4, 2010, following a controversy over claims by state attorneys general that the advertisements promoted prostitution.^[40][41]

In 2002, a disclaimer was put on the "men seeking men", "casual encounters", "erotic services", and "rants and raves" boards to ensure that those who clicked on these sections were over the age of 18, but no disclaimer was put on the "men seeking women", "women seeking men" or "women seeking women" boards. As a response to charges of discrimination and negative stereotyping, Buckmaster explained that the company's policy is a response to user feedback requesting the warning on the more sexually explicit sections, including "men seeking men".^[42] Today, all of the above listed boards (as well as some others) have a disclaimer.

On May 13, 2009, Craigslist announced that it would close the erotic services section, replacing it with an adult services section to be reviewed by Craigslist employees. This decision came after allegations by several U.S. states that the erotic services ads were being used for prostitution.^[43]

On September 4, 2010, Craigslist closed the adult services section of its website in the United States. The site initially replaced the adult services page link with the word "censored" in white-on-black text. The site received criticism and complaints from attorneys general that the section's ads were facilitating prostitution and child sex trafficking.^[44][45]

The adult services section link was still active in countries outside of the U.S.^[46] Matt Zimmerman, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said, "Craigslist isn't legally culpable for these posts, but the public pressure has increased and Craigslist is a small company." Brian Carver, attorney and assistant professor at UC Berkeley, said that legal threats could have a chilling effect on online expression. "If you impose liability on Craigslist, YouTube and Facebook for anything their users do, then they're not going to take chances. It would likely result in the takedown of what might otherwise be perfectly legitimate free expression."^[47]

On September 8, 2010, the "censored" label and its dead link to adult services were completely removed.^[48][49]

Craigslist announced on September 15, 2011, that it had closed its adult services in the United States, however, it defended its right to carry such ads. Free speech and some sex crime victim advocates criticized the removal of the section, saying that it threatened free speech and that it diminished law enforcement's ability to track criminals. However, the removal was applauded by many state attorneys general and some other groups fighting sex crimes. Craigslist said that there is some indication that those who posted ads in the adult services section are posting elsewhere. Sex ads had cost $10 initially and it was estimated they would have brought in $44 million in 2010 had they continued.^[50][51] In the four months following the closure, monthly revenue from sex ads on six other sites (primarily Backpage) increased from $2.1 to $3.1 million, partly due to price increases.^[52]

The company makes efforts to fight prostitution and sex trafficking, and in 2015, Craig Newmark received an award from the FBI for cooperation with law enforcement to fight human trafficking. ^{[53][54][55][56][57]}

On December 19, 2010, after pressure from Ottawa and several provinces, Craigslist closed 'Erotic Services' and 'Adult Gigs' from its Canadian website, even though prostitution was not itself illegal in Canada at the time.^[58]

Following the FOSTA bill passed on April 11, 2018, Craigslist ceased offering its "Personals" section within all US domains, stating "Any tool or service can be misused. We can’t take such risk without jeopardizing all our other services."^[59][60]

Craigslist has a user flagging system to quickly identify illegal and inappropriate postings. Users may flag postings they believe to be in violation of Craigslist guidelines.

Flagging does not require account login or registration, and can be done anonymously by anyone.^[61] Postings are subject to automated removal when a certain number of users flag them. The number of flags required for a posting's removal is dynamically variable and remains unknown to all but Craigslist staff.^[61] Some users allege that flagging may also occur as acts of vandalism by groups of individuals at different ISPs, but no evidence of this has ever been shown. Flagging can also alert Craigslist staff to blocks of ads requiring manual oversight or removal.^[61]

Flagging is also done by Craigslist itself (Craigslist's automated systems) and the posts will never appear on the search results.^[62]

Craigslist includes a barter option in its "for sale" section. This growing trade economy has been documented on the television program Barter Kings and the blog One red paperclip.^[63][64]

In July 2005, the San Francisco Chronicle criticized Craigslist for allowing ads from dog breeders, stating that this could encourage the over-breeding and irresponsible selling of pit bulls in the Bay Area.^[65] According to Craigslist's terms of service, the sale of pets is prohibited, though re-homing with small adoption fees is acceptable.^[66]

In January 2006, the San Francisco Bay Guardian published an editorial claiming that Craigslist could threaten the business of local alternative newspapers.^[67]

L. Gordon Crovitz, writing for The Wall Street Journal, criticized the company for using lawsuits "to prevent anyone from doing to it what it did to newspapers", contrary to the spirit of the website, which bills itself in a "noncommercial nature, public service mission, and noncorporate culture".^[68] This article was a reaction to lawsuits from Craigslist to prevent competition. The Swedish luxury marketplace website Jameslist.com received a hefty lawsuit filed on July 11, 2012^[69] which among unspecified damages also asked for a complete shutdown of Jameslist.com ^[70] As a consequence, the young company was forced to rename to JamesEdition.

In 2012, Craigslist sued PadMapper, a site that hoped to improve the user interface for browsing housing ads, and 3Taps, a company that helped PadMapper obtain data from Craigslist, in Craigslist v. 3Taps. This led users to criticize Craigslist for trying to shut down a service that was useful to them.^[32]

In 2001, the company started the Craigslist Foundation,^[71] a § 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that offers free and low-cost events and online resources to promote community building at all levels. It accepts charitable donations, and rather than directly funding organizations, it produces "face-to-face events and offers online resources to help grassroots organizations get off the ground and contribute real value to the community".

Since 2004, the Craigslist Foundation has hosted eight annual conferences called Boot Camp, an in-person event that focuses on skills for connecting, motivating and inspiring greater community involvement and impact.

The Craigslist Foundation is also the fiscal sponsor for Our Good Works, the organization that manages AllforGood.org, an application that distributes volunteer opportunities across the web and helps people get involved in their communities.^[72]

As of summer 2013, the Craigslist Foundation's functions are mostly moved to LikeMinded.org and the CraigsListFoundation.org is no longer updated.