1. Craigslist originated literally as “Craig’s List” when Craig Newmark, a San Francisco computer programmer, started emailing a list of local events and notices to his circle of friends in 1995 since he was new in town and thought it was a good way to bring the community together.
2. By 1996, Craig’s list had grown so big and popular that he moved the whole thing to a web-based service instead of email exchange, expanding his original content and adding new categories for users. As of 1999 Newmark had incorporated his exploding project and opened it up to nine new U.S. cities, all operated by only nine employees.
3. Fast forward 20 years from its inception, and Craigslist now has at least 60 million U.S. users and 50 billion page views every month, as well as 50 million daily queries.
4. Each month, users post more than 100 million individual classified ads, of which 2 million are job listings.
5. “The List” isn’t just for buying and selling or finding a job, as it also runs also sees 200 million posts in its discussion forums every month.
6. Craigslist users view 9.2 million ads for used cars on the site every day. But by far the most popular forums are the “for sale” and “housing” sections, which get about 300,000 new postings every day in the 23 largest cities of the U.S. alone.
7. To put its popularity in perspective, Craigslist is the 7th most viewed website in the United States.
8. With more than 700 local Craigslist sites in 70 countries, it’s also the 33rd most visit