Becoming Craig’s List

This chapter describes craigslist's transformation from an e-mail list to a massively popular online marketplace. It starts with the role of the San Francisco Bay Area in the development of craigslist's purpose and ideology. During this early phase of the tech industry, democratic values of openness and access held sway, values that have shaped craigslist's look and feel ever since. Using interviews and textual analysis of craigslist's public-facing blog, the chapter describes the site's basic features and rules, as well as the company's values and policies. The goal here is to explain how the San Francisco tech scene shaped craigslist's ideas about online publics and politics.