Craigslist Expands Coverage of Cities by 25 Percent
Craigslist, the simple, disruptive and occasionally controversial classified advertising site, is expanding. — On Thursday, the San Francisco company quietly added new sites for 140 cities, a 25 percent increase, bringing its global directory to 690 cities over all.
Context & Ripple Effects
Craigslist enters this expansion from a position of unusual momentum: Hitwise data from March 2009 showed it overtaking Myspace as the top U.S. search term for the first time in three years, with search volume up sharply amid the recession-driven shift toward classifieds. The company has also spent much of 2008-2009 playing defense — Connecticut's attorney general pressured it over its adult listings, and by May it committed to replacing the Erotic Services section with manually reviewed ads (the 'blatant Internet brothel' controversy).
The competitive backdrop dates to July 2007, when eBay launched its own classifieds service after clashing with Craigslist's board over its stake (a dispute covered here). Against that rivalry, quietly adding 140 city sites — a 25 percent jump to 690 globally — is Craigslist doubling down on geographic breadth as its core advantage rather than product features.
First-order effects
- Local sellers and small advertisers in the 140 new markets gain access to Craigslist's audience for the first time, extending the site's reach precisely when recession-era demand for cheap classifieds is peaking.
- eBay's 2007-vintage classifieds push now faces a competitor whose directory covers 690 cities, raising the bar on any geography-by-geography expansion strategy.
Second-order effects
- Every new city multiplies the manual-review workload Craigslist just accepted for adult ads in May, straining the employee-checked moderation model it chose under attorney-general pressure.
- The same growth widens the surface area for the trademark litigation and third-party-content disputes Craigslist was already facing as of July 2009.
Third-order effects
- If scale keeps beating feature competition, classifieds consolidates around broad horizontal directories while niche players are pushed into verticals Craigslist's flat structure serves poorly.
- Regulators' attention has tracked Craigslist's footprint so far; a 25 percent larger footprint implies scrutiny scaling with it, making moderation capacity a structural constraint on growth.
The trend: Classifieds during the downturn is becoming a land-grab for geographic coverage, with Craigslist converting recession-era search momentum into a wider footprint than any rival can match city by city.