whatever happned with Sellius? (did Craig throw them a bone?)

MORE: oh, the sound of sucking up...
......
sort of looks like it -- they had some pretty good questions back a while...

Delia

P.S. a bit of attention from Craig, and they seem to have forgotten all about it... D.

nothing (necessarily) wrong with charging -- pocketing the money is the problem...

re: Craig (about charging money for real estate ads): "It was simply a fix to a problem."
(end of third paragraph)

Delia

P.S. that "financial windfall" should have gone towards customer service and improvements instead of adding more millions for the shareholders... D.

will craigslist ban Wipbox?

it certainly appears to help users but does it technically violate craigslist's terms of use (agree not to:"u) use automated means, including spiders, robots, crawlers, data mining tools, or the like to download data from the Service - unless expressly permitted by craigslist") and will craigslist do anything about it?

Delia

P.S. Wipbox gets their ebay data through dataunion (which licenses the ebay content to them) but it appears that they do not have permission to use the craigslist data. D.

Is Craig a pimp?

some people think so... it all depends on whether he profits from all that prostitution going on on the site... Steven has unveiled that craigslist's "secret sauce" was sex related... but how much of those all important overall hits (which presumably bring advertisers to the paying sections) are really a result of prostitution? D.

another way to milk craigslist: what's Craig's salary?

may have been wrong when I said: "who cares?" he may indeed draw an unjustifiably large salary... (which would be another way to milk craigslist)

Delia

comic relief: "symbolic equity"

NetVet: "imagine someone said, symbolically, you can have 25% of my wife" D.

Owen's story

just so you don't get distracted by the last comments by Seth on Dan Gillmor's blog, here's a good summary of Owen's story (the opinion is a bit off, I'll explain later):

"My only point was to mention that they lied, outright lied, when they said they didn't benefit financially from the eBay transaction, and that they acted in poor character when they decided to malign the co-founded Phillip Knowlton, who did nothing to deserve this treatment. Phillip walked away with a lot of money, but he was also demonized, by people whom he had formerly trusted. And again, as was reported above, the only reason he sold was because he was being squeezed out." (comment by Valleygurl in Valleywag)

the thing is that, as I said on Dan Gillmor's blog... if we go by what Craig said on his blog, on the issue of having profited from the transaction, he didn't straight out lie... was he vague and ambiguous, which resulted in having even seasoned journalists believe he didn't profit financially? -- absolutely! and that's nothing new for Craig...(it seems to be his trademark -- he appears to be extremely good with ambiguity: things just "happen" to click in his interest, over and over and over... the chance that would just happen seems to be minute) ... that's another reason why I found Owen's story quite plausible...

however, on the issue of Phillip Knowlton's part in the affair, Vallygurl would be correct... craigslist was way more than just vague and ambiguous: it demonised somebody they temselves squeezed out, somebody that as a consequence had no choice but to sell...

and the real straight out lie seems to be the "symbolic ownership" (no dollar value) Craig talks about... which is at the crux of Craig's whole story (as we know today, craigslist was profitable at the time -- I don't think that was publicly known in 2004 when Craig told his story)

Delia

P.S. keep in mind that Owen's story does NOT come with proof attached (but then, neither does Craig's ...)

P.P.S. also, as far as I'm concerned, bringing to light the truth about things other publications got wrong is the redeeming value of tabloids such as Valleywag... D.