The Wikimedia Foundation advisory board was created in January 2007. The main job of advisory board members is to attend a once a year meeting at the annual Wikimania conference. They also contribute in their specific areas of expertise. I guess that means customer service for Newmark (his Craigslist title is Customer Service Rep), as well as patting Wikipedia on the back for also creating a massively massive website based at least party on sparsity of design (something he has direct experience doing himself).

Newmark has called Wikipedia “first draft of history.” Current advisory board members include:

Angela Beesley Starling (Chair, Wikimedia Advisory Board; co-founder, Wikia)
Ward Cunningham (Developer of the first wiki)
Melissa Hagemann (Open access and open education advocate, Open Society Institute/Soros foundations)
Mitch Kapor (Founder/Co-founder Lotus Development, EFF, Mozilla Foundation)
Neeru Khosla (Co-founder, CK-12)
Teemu Leinonen (Professor, Media Lab, Aalto University)
Rebecca MacKinnon (Journalist; founder, Global Voices Online)
Wayne Mackintosh (Education specialist, Commonwealth of Learning)
Benjamin Mako Hill (Author, free software advocate)
Roger McNamee (Venture capital, musician)
Trevor Neilson (Partner, Global Philanthropy Group)
Craig Newmark (Founder, Craigslist.org)
Florence Nibart-Devouard (Former Chair, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees; Consultant in Collaborative Media)
Achal Prabhala (Researcher and writer)
Clay Shirky (Associate Teacher, Interactive Telecommunications Program, NYU)
Ethan Zuckerman (Research Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School)

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In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Dart (pictured) said he was disappointed with the verdict and is now considering an appeal.

The legal battle Dart just lost was centered around Craigslist’s erotic services category (now dubbed Adult Services), which the Cook County sheriff alleged facilitated prostitution and constitutes a public nuisance.

Federal District Court Judge John F. Grady threw out the lawsuit, which was filed in July 2009 and got Dart a lot of attention, in its entirety.

The judge said that it was far from clear that Craigslist had actually encouraged its service to be used for advertising prostitutes, which was the core of Dart’s allegations. Grady added that Craiglist may even be able to claim protection under U.S. freedom of speech laws and the Communications Decency Act, which immunizes Internet intermediaries from civil liability for material posted by others.

Dart has now reportedly “vowed not to give up” and seems determined to waste more valuable time and resources on this ridiculous case.

We couldn’t have put it better than the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Matt Zimmerman, who wrote:

Meritless cases brought by law enforcement officers, amounting to little more than publicity stunts with little to no chance of success, do little to address the officers’ underlying concerns.

You might remember how South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster threatened similar legal action against Craigslist but ultimately got served nothing but humiliation when another federal judge blocked him from prosecuting Craigslist management, at least until he’s made a final decision on the case.

(Image via Huffington Post)

dart.dismissed –

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Even with a reasonable amount of overlap accounted for, these are significant numbers, albeit in countries where potential advertising income is generally much lower than it is in the U.S. and Europe.

OLX (a competitor to Craigslist in the United States) and hi5 (a competitor to the likes of Facebook and MySpace on a global level) claim the fresh partnership serves to consolidate both companies’ hold on the Latin American market, while making way for accelerated growth in the rest of the world.

As part of the agreement, hi5 will implement OLX features that include the ability to display ads on a user’s profile page and to see friends’ ads, as well as a feature to tell friends about their own ads via newsfeeds. OLX will also allow users to include videos and pictures in classified listings, comment, post/view listings in over 39 languages and 90 countries, and access the site from mobile devices. The latter two features are clearly meant to appeal to a large international user base.

Oodle, another major player in the online classifieds space, has been scoring similar deals recently with social networking services and portals like Facebook, MySpace and AOL.

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Anyone see Funny People this weekend? One of the best movies I’ve seen this year, despite the 10 minute MySpace commercial in the middle of it.

The two main characters, Adam Sandler and Seth Rogen, visit MySpace for a $300,000 paid comedy gig. Among a variety of “f**ck Facebook, In the Face” jokes (said two or three times. really) was some really good material, including Rogen asking “I wonder if Tom and Craig from Craigslist would ever get in a fight….Who’s tougher? Tom has more friends…Craig has weirder friends though. Craig has friends that are willing to do a lot more for cash, I’ll say that.”

Sandler also says “They say the more friends you have on MySpace the less friends you have in real life.”

MySpace cofounder Tom Anderson was also on set and part of the movie, and has now officially been mixed up with another Tom Anderson on IMDB. Overall it was an amazing commercial for MySpace. The company says they did not pay for the placement.

It really was an excellent movie, and it was no. 1 in the U.S. over the weekend with $23.4 million gross. At 140 minutes long, though, you need to be prepared for a long one.

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All I’m wondering is, where’s South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster when we need him? Adultery is serious business. This is clearly, somehow, all Craigslist’s fault. For example, how do we know that Sanford didn’t meet his mistress in the adultery section of Craigslist? And also, can we please kick South Carolina out of the Union now?

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All for Good basically lets you browse volunteer activities and find related events based on your geographical location and/or interests. The site brings together listings from organizations and local groups to help you find volunteer activities that fit your time and talent. If you ‘like’ a certain item, you can share it with your friends across various social networking services, hopefully spawning more attention and the possibility for the activity or event to spread virally within your network.

According to the about page, All for Good was “inspired by the call of President Obama to engage more Americans in service”. The link to the White House is notable: according to a report by MSNBC, the seeds for All for Good were planted by people who advised Barack Obama during the transition period. Two names that circulate: Jonathan Greenblatt, a faculty member at the Anderson School of Management at the University of California at LA, and Sonal Shah, former head of global development at Google.org who currently leads the new White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation. The report also cites Kate Bedingfield, a White House spokeswoman, who apparently said she felt All for Good is “an exciting and innovative idea” and added that the White House is working with the corporation to explore ways to use the tool.

The site is in the process of being transferred to a new non-profit organization called Our Good Works, formed by some of the people who initiated the project. For the moment, the project is hosted and managed by Google, and several of the search and advertising giant’s engineers developed All for Good as a 20-percent project (as widely known, Google lets engineers spend a day a week on projects that interest them).

In the spirit of openness, All for Good is completely open source and lets people log in with a slew of digital identity providers, including Facebook Connect, Google Friend Connect, Yahoo and OpenID. The service also comes with an extensive API that makes it possible for third-party developers to create applications based on data generated by the All for Good community.

(Via Ostatic)

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If anything sucks more than being the target of an ambitious but delusional gubernatorial candidate who has suddenly developed a bit of a fetish for prostitution, it’s being ignored by that candidate. As far as Village Voice sees the world, Craigslist just got a bunch of free press. And they want their share.

When Craigslist management was facing a criminal investigation for listings on the site they did the smart thing. They talked about the law, and they pointed out that the real smut was on other sites that were being ignored by the South Carolina Attorney General. If you really want hard core porn and prostitution, Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster pointed out, check out Village Voice’s BackPage.com.

That’s all body fluids under the bridge now, of course, since a federal judge smacked down McMaster and forbid him from stalking Craigslist management.

But Village Voice is still smarting from those Buckmaster links in that blog post. Yesterday they issued a very official press release titled “Village Voice Media to Craigslist CEO Buckmaster: Calm Down, Back Off; There is Nothing Wrong With a Little Competition.”

In an email, Village Voice’s PR firm accuses Buckmaster of “leveraging the legal bind he’s in to damage Craigslist’s competition.”

The real reason for the press release and press outreach, of course, is to get a little bit of the spotlight pointed to backpages, too. Because their official story doesn’t make sense.

Backpages has adult ads, lots and lots of them, and they’re proud of it: “We will continue to exercise our right to accept legal adult postings,” they say. All Buckmaster did was link to a whole bunch of them. And since backpages desperately needs the traffic, what they really should be doing is thanking Craigslist, not attacking them.

What we learned today: If you really want to pay for sex, backpages is the place to go.

Full press release is below:

Village Voice Media to Craigslist CEO Buckmaster: Calm Down, Back Off; There is Nothing Wrong With a Little Competition

PHOENIX, May 29 /PRNewswire/ — Last Friday, Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craigslist, fired a deliberate, unnecessary and wholly inaccurate shot across the bow of Village Voice Media and backpage.com, our online classified advertising property. Given the serious nature of what Buckmaster inferred in his post about Village Voice Media newspapers and backpage.com, we can’t sit on our hands and be silent.

In the original blog post, which was later “submarine” edited to reword and soften some of the attacks towards Village Voice Media, Buckmaster complained that politicians are attacking Craigslist but not Village Voice Media and other media outlets because they have a “need for positive stories and campaign endorsements from those very same newspapers.

“Is it possible that writing stories critical of Craigslist’s (relatively tame) ‘adult service’ section is more career-friendly than attacking their own employer (or journalistic media brethren) for operating a (far more graphic) ‘adult service’ section of their own?”

Buckmaster and Craigslist are in a tough, and in many ways, frightening situation – they have a number of moralistic state Attorneys General threatening them over their adult ads, and a raft of bad press following the terrible tragedy in Boston that the company is admittedly in no way responsible for. But, the manner in which Buckmaster is responding to this pressure – by disingenuously lashing out at competitors and caving to political pressure – is inexcusable, and displays a remarkable lack of sound judgment.

In 2002, Village Voice Media recognized the forces that were changing the classified advertising market and created backpage.com to answer that challenge. We’ve put a lot of work into making it the No. 2 free classifieds site in U.S. We’re fine with being No. 2, proud in fact. Buckmaster, apparently, is not. Instead of working with his competitors to find a way to solve, or at least mitigate issues surrounding adult ads – the shortcomings of automatic content filters is something we are all trying to fix – Buckmaster simply attempted to take the competition down with him. And, his methods leave much to be desired.

First off, our newspapers don’t endorse politicians and rarely have anything nice to say about them, so to say that politicians aren’t going after Village Voice Media because they need our endorsement isn’t viable. Secondly, Buckmaster is only complaining because a competitor is challenging his economic advantage in the free classified arena – which he built in part on adult ads – and has made him a very wealthy man. His talk of building community and serving his users rings hollow. It now appears that, as is so often the case with New Age entrepreneurs, it’s all about the money.

We will continue to exercise our right to accept legal adult postings from our users and concentrate on growing backpage.com. We are aggressively building additional technical solutions as well as increasing our manual site inspections to improve efficiency of removing content that is illegal or otherwise violates our Terms of Use.

About Village Voice Media

Village Voice Media is a collection of 15 weekly newspapers and daily Web sites, including New York’s Village Voice, the LA Weekly, Denver’s Westword and the Phoenix New Times. Online, in print, and on mobile devices, VVM’s products combine music, food and events coverage with gritty, hard-hitting journalism to create the most powerful city guides in each market. While the focus of the brand is local, its free classifieds site backpage.com, partnership with social recommendation engine LikeMe.net and national sales force, Voice Media Group, extend its reach on a national level.

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The consent order granting the restraining order is embedded below.

McMaster started the war earlier this month by threatening criminal prosecution against Craigslist and Craigslist management for allowing pornographic images and ads for prostitution on the South Carolina Craigslist site. Craigslist took extraordinary steps to comply with McMaster’s demands, despite the fact that legal experts questioned if McMaster even had a case.

Craigslist stood firm and filed suit against McMaster in federal court. McMaster, now facing charges of his own, declared victory and ran away.

This final humiliation just makes it clear that no one on the planet with a shred of common sense seems to side with McMaster. The man is running for governor of South Carolina and is using Craigslist to make headlines. The evidence of his douchery is overwhelming:

• His office has never prosecuted a prostitution case in his seven years in office.
• McMaster ignored sites with far more prostitution listings to go after the higher profile Craigslist.
• The EFF says “Attorney General Henry McMaster has no case”
• Local South Carolina press ripped him apart.
• Techdirt calls McMaster a liar
• 80% of our readers would rather lose South Carolina than Craigslist
• South Carolina residents seem to agree.

I’d say we’re done here, although I still think Craigslist should permanently shut down the South Carolina site and ban South Carolina IP addresses just out of spite. But the good guys won one today, which is increasingly infrequent. Time to celebrate.

Update: In other South Carolina news, they found that missing 555 pound teenager. Sigh.

052209Order –

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- Iraqi Information Minister Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf, declaring victory in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion, adding “We have them surrounded in their tanks.”

South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster pulls an “al-Sahhaf” by declaring victory in the Craigslist debacle:

Columbia, SC – “The defensive legal action craigslist has taken against the solicitors and my office is good news. It shows that craigslist is taking the matter seriously for the first time

More importantly, overnight they have removed the erotic services section from their website, as we asked them to do. And they are now taking responsibility for the content of their future advertisements. If they keep their word, this is a victory for law enforcement and for the people of South Carolina.

Unfortunately, we had to inform them of possible state criminal violations concerning their past practices to produce a serious response. We trust they will now adhere to the higher standards they have promised. This office and the law enforcement agencies of South Carolina will continue to monitor the site to make certain that our laws are respected.”

That’s nice. But here’s the truth. On May 13 Craigslist announced it would remove the erotic services category on its site. Despite that announcement and the subsequent removal of all pornographic and prostitution ads on the South Carolina Craigslist site, McMaster threatened criminal action against Craigslist management.

The reason? McMaster doesn’t care about Craigslist. But he does care about becoming the governor of South Carolina, and Craigslist is an easy target. He needs the press to see him taking a tough stance on crime, and a faraway but high profile startup is his meal ticket.

But Craigslist stood firm, and today filed a lawsuit in federal court against McMaster seeking declaratory relief and a restraining order.

McMaster’s statement declaring victory came after that lawsuit. And what he’s really doing is running away from a situation that has become a little too hard for him to handle. Craigslist bit back. He’s moving on to easier targets.

Our readers agree that, if pressed, they’d choose Craigslist over South Carolina. But what’s most interesting is that the conservative residents of South Carolina agree – McMaster is a jerk.

So pop the champagne bottles, another bad guy was disgraced today.

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Guess who we’re rooting for here? (Hint: We’ve encouraged the executive team at Craigslist to stand firm from the get-go). After all, our own poll shows that given the choice between keeping Craigslist or South Carolina, most of you would choose Craigslist. That is not too surprising. But even some people in South Carolina say Craigslist is more important than the state. And don’t forget the all-important “McMaster, stop abusing your power” Facebook group.

Facing certain prosecution, Craigslist decided to strike first with its own lawsuit. In a blog post, amusingly tagged ‘harrassment’ (sic), that went up earlier this morning, Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster writes:

Two weeks ago Mr McMaster presented craigslist with an ultimatum, “to remove the portions of the Internet site dedicated to South Carolina and its municipal regions which contain categories for and functions allowing for the solicitation of prostitution and the dissemination and posting of graphic pornographic material” within ten (10) days.”

“If those South Carolina portions of the site are not removed,” McMaster said, “the management of craigslist may be subject to criminal investigation and prosecution.”

In addition to being unwarranted by the facts, legal experts agree that the charges threatened represent an unconstitutional prior restraint on free speech, and are clearly barred by federal law (sec 230 CDA).

Interestingly, if you read Mr McMaster’s ultimatum carefully, you’ll note that the only way to definitively comply with it is to take down the craigslist sites for South Carolina in their entirety. The open architecture of craigslist, quintessential to the value it provides for users, simply does not allow for the absolute prevention of solicitation or pornography, with respect to any of its categories and functions.

Usage of craigslist in South Carolina has exploded over the last two years, with some cities experiencing 2000% growth. South Carolinians clearly value craigslist services, and appreciate finding jobs, housing, automobiles, for sale items, friends, romance, community information, local services, event listings, and just about everything else they need in their everyday lives, all in one place, and all for free.

We say just go ahead and shut off South Carolina from Craigslist.

Update: the Attorney General’s office says this is good news.

McMaster Statement On Craigslist Legal Action

COLUMBIA, SC – “The defensive legal action craigslist has taken against the solicitors and my office is good news. It shows that craigslist is taking the matter seriously for the first time

More importantly, overnight they have removed the erotic services section from their website, as we asked them to do. And they are now taking responsibility for the content of their future advertisements. If they keep their word, this is a victory for law enforcement and for the people of South Carolina.

Unfortunately, we had to inform them of possible state criminal violations concerning their past practices to produce a serious response. We trust they will now adhere to the higher standards they have promised. This office and the law enforcement agencies of South Carolina will continue to monitor the site to make certain that our laws are respected.”

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The numbers are obviously not statistically relevant since TechCrunch readers, a tech savvy lot, are going to be more likely to side with Craigslist. But South Carolinians (or whatever it’s supposed to be) apparently aren’t too thrilled with their state, either. The Palmetto Scoop, a popular conservative blog in South Carolina, held their own poll today and asked “Which is more important, 2,500 TechCrunch readers (the total number that had voted as of this post) or enforcing the law?”

As of right now, 60% of the 124 respondents say, well, TechCrunch is more important than enforcing the law (which isn’t really what the Craigslist issue is about anyway).

Your conservative voters have spoken, Mr Attorney General McMaster. We’ll draw up the secession paperwork for your signature.

Update: Just because it’s awesome:

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Congratulations to Craigslist for standing up to South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster and demanding an apology. The situation they find themselves in, facing threatened criminal prosecution, is absurd. I stand by my post last night that Craigslist should simply shut down the South Carolina site permanently, and discontinue any negotiations with the state. McMaster has no basis for threatening civil or criminal action, and this is clearly just a way for him to get press in his bid for governor. A Facebook group has sprung up around this as well.

But as an aside, this whole drama has made me wonder, just how important is South Carolina anyway? If it really came down to choosing between South Carolina and Craigslist, how many people would rather have South Carolina?

South Carolina a former slave state that has less than 4.5 million people and a median income of under $40,000/year, 39th in the U.S. 92% of the state’s residents are Christian, and the gross state product is around $150 billion. A main driver of economic activity is tobacco, and the Klu Klux Klan has a vibrant and active chapter in the state. On the upside, I hear Myrtle beach is nice, and my co-editor Erick Schonfeld’s mother lives there.

Compare that to Craigslist, which doesn’t have any physical territory but boasts 46 million monthly visitors in the U.S. alone, making it nearly ten times the size of South Carolina. The site has been a significant factor in disrupting old media, particularly newspapers, by making classified listings free. Craigslist has made the lives of tens of millions of people better by helping them get rid of unwanted couches, find a new job, or rent an apartment. And it has never charged much for what it does – it is a classic case of giving more than taking.

If you really had to choose, which is more important to you, Craigslist or South Carolina? Which has the bigger positive impact on our culture, and which adds more utility to your daily existence. Craigslist wins hands down.

That’s why I’d be very upset if McMaster has his way and puts Craigslist management behind bars. Or even if his attacks have the effect of chilling the freedom-loving Craigslist community. Kick South Carolina out of the Union (we can add Puerto Rico or Canada afterwards if we really need a nice round number of 50 states). Build a wall around it to stop the inflow of federal dollars. We don’t want to do this, but the dangerously self-serving and backwards thinking of the state’s elected leadership leaves us no choice.

But don’t touch Craigslist. It’s too important.

What do you think? Take the poll below. And remember, even though what I’m proposing is absurd, how would you really answer?

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Eliot Spitzer was the alpha male Attorney General, attacking the securities industry, Internet fraud and the mortage industry, among others. He was rewarded with the governorship of New York until his spectacular resignation.

Which brings us back to the subject of hookers, and South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster. Earlier this month McMaster, who is of course eyeing a run for governor, threatened criminal prosecution against Craigslist management if pornography and ads for prostitution were not removed from the site. Craigslist took extraordinary measures to comply.

But quiet compliance isn’t what McMaster is looking for. He wants handcuffs and a trial, the kind of stuff that Spitzer got. He issued the following statement on Saturday “As of 5:00 p.m. this afternoon, the craigslist South Carolina site continues to display advertisements for prostitution and graphic pornographic material. This content was not removed as we requested. We have no alternative but to move forward with criminal investigation and potential prosecution.”

Craigslist fired back in an uncharacteristically emotional post that noted how tame the current Craigslist site was compared to a number of other listing services in South Carolina, including one run by Microsoft.

Seriously? The craigslist adult services section for Greenville, SC has a total of 1 ad for the last 3 days, featuring a photograph of a fully clothed person. The “erotic services” section for Greenville, which we recently closed, has 8 ads total which will expire in two days, and even for these ads the images and text are quite tame.

Meanwhile, the “adult entertainment” section of greenville.backpage.com (careful with link, NSFW), owned by Village Voice Media, has over 60 ads for the last 3 days, and about 250 in total. In sharp contrast with craigslist, many of these ads are quite explicit, quoting prices for specific sex acts, featuring close-ups of bare genitalia, etc.

Of course, no one in mainstream legal circles thinks either company should be subject to civil suit, let alone a criminal investigation. But if for whatever reason you were so motivated, would you target a venue with 9 PG-13 rated ads, or one with 250 XXX rated ones?

And FWIW, telephone yellow pages and other local print media have both companies beat hands down as adult service ad venues for South Carolina.

Any interest in targeting them for criminal prosecution? Didn’t think so.

As we wrote previously, Craigslist is the hot site right now that triggers an immediate response from the press (it used to be MySpace, then Facebook). There is no public saftey issue in targeting Craigslist. The only issue is politics, and McMaster sees an easy target. I think he made a serious mistake, though, in targeting Craigslist. Not only are the allegations absurd, but he’s failed to realize the huge community of rabid Craigslist supporters. Spitzer always went after deeply unpopular targets. He would never have touched Craigslist.

I say to founder Craig Newmark and CEO Jim Buckmaster: Stand firm. Don’t back down. In fact, just turn off the South Carolina site entirely and ban IPs from that state. Forever. And if they press criminal charges, fight it with everything you have.

The community will support you, and that’s one hell of a community, with 46 million U.S. unique visitors a month (Comscore, April 2009). Get 5 million of them (less than 1 in 9) to sign a petition calling for McMaster’s resignation (that’s more than the population of South Carolina). It won’t get him to resign, but it may get enough voters to remember how irresponsible he is when the election for governor comes around. And I’m pretty sure that petition will be the top search result for his name for a long, long time.

And if you do end up in jail, don’t worry. I promise to visit at least once a month, even though it will be in South Carolina.

More on the story at TechMeme.

Update: Buckmaster demands an apology. Well played.

Update 2: Take the poll.

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After coming under increasing scrutiny from various state attorneys general for the open prostitution listings in its “erotic services” category, Craigslist is now folding in the face of criminal charges. The company said in a blog post that it will replace the erotic services category with a new “Adult services” category where each ad will be individually reviewed before posting.

Existing ads in the erotic services category will remain for seven days, but already new ads are not being accepted in that category. People trying to place an ad in the adult category are reminded: “Ads suggesting or implying an exchange of sexual favors for money are strictly prohibited” and “Ads including pornographic images, or images suggestive of an offer of sexual favors are strictly prohibited.”

A quick glance at the erotic services section for New York City shows a lot of flesh with ads promising “IT’S NOTHING LIKE THE FIRST TIME!!” and “ASIAN HOTTIE . . . TO FULFUILL YOUR DREAM . . . WILLING AND READY.” Meanwhile, the adult services section for NYC is slightly less explicit. It has a lot more listings for “massages” and “sensual bodyrubs.” The first screenshot below is from an adult services ad, the second is the erotic services page. So much for truth in marketing.

Update: in a blog post about to go up entitled “Striking a Balance,” which Craigslist just sent us, the company states:

As of today for all US sites, postings to the “erotic services” category will no longer be accepted, and in 7 days the category will be removed.

Also effective today for all US sites, a new category entitled “adult services” will be opened for postings by legal adult service providers.
Each posting to this new category will be manually reviewed before appearing on the site, to ensure compliance with craigslist posting guidelines and terms of use. New postings will cost $10, but once approved, will be eligible for reposting at $5.

It also points out that its moderation system is “the most successful system ever conceived for eliminating inappropriate activity from a massive internet community,” whereas inappropriate listings in print classifieds can’t even be removed. Of course, there are also many more listings on Craigslist than in any single paper and up until now there has been no pre-posting review whatsoever, so I am not sure that is something to brag about.

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OLX, the Craigslist for the rest of the world, has raised $5 million in funding from from Nexus Capital India. The company raised $13.5 million in Series B funding in April 2008 from General Catalyst Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, Founders Fund and DN Capital, bringing the total funding raised to $28.5 million. OLX raised $13.5 million in Series B funding in April 2008 from the same investors as above, and raised an undisclosed Series A round of $10 million in September 2006 with the same VCs and various angels participating.

While the free classifieds site has trouble competing with Craigslist in the U.S., OLX has a strong user base internationally. With a presence in more than 87 countries in 39 languages, OLX’s popularity lies mainly in Spain, India, Portugal, Mexico, South America, China, and the Philippines.

Fabrice Grinda, founder and CEO of OLX says the new investment will be used to make new acquisitions, implement site improvements, expand globally, and pursue aggressive marketing initiatives. In 2007 OLX has made an investment in Edeng.cn, a Chinese free classifieds site and acquired Mundoanuncio.com, a Craigslist-like classifieds site targeting the Hispanic market, in 2006. Much of its success in the Philippines can be attributed to its white label partnership with Friendster. Its offices are also spread over the globe with 125 employees (OLX has added almost 35 employees since last year) working in New York, Buenos Aires, Beijing, and Moscow.

While OLX may play second fiddle to Craigslist in the U.S., the site prides itself on being a second-generation free classifieds site, complete with Web 2.0 features such as social network widgets, better search capabilities, interactive maps, and mobile functionality. Craigslist has recently been under scrutiny by Attorney Generals over prostitution and the “Craigslist Murder” that have taken place in conjunction with the site. eBay’s Kijiji is also a competitor in the space, but Kijiji has set its sights on catching up to Craigslist in the U.S., even considering a name change.

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Years ago if a crime was committed and anyone involved had a MySpace account, the press focused only on the MySpace angle. The attorneys general went after them with a vengeance. Then it was Facebook, who managed to stay in the spotlight only momentarily.

Now Craigslist is firmly in the AGs’ sites. And those AGs aren’t going to just sit by and do nothing as mainstream press paints a horrifying picture of sexual debauchery and murder. There’s easy press out there for the taking, people, and these AGs aren’t going to let this opportunity pass them by.

Earlier today Henry McMaster, the Attorney General of South Carolina, wrote to Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster. The letter, copied below, starts with “I hope you will take immediate steps to end craigslist from being used to facilitate harmful activities in South Carolina.” It ends with a threat of “criminal investigation and prosecution” if ads for prostitution aren’t removed from the South Carolina parts of craigslist by this Friday.

McMaster also expressed concern that pornographic images were displayed on Craigslist and were accessible by minors.

Craigslist responded on their blog without saying much.

We’ll put the pornography issue aside as purely ridiculous (see Google image search and all the rest of the smut filled Internet). But the recent “Craigslist Murder” of a prostitute (or massage therapist, whatever) is going to be too much for Craigslist to overcome. The AGs will salivate over a lawsuit, which equates to press and votes and has no downside.

The erotic services category on Craigslist is likely history sometime soon. And, alarmingly, anonymity on the site in general may follow not too long afterwards.

Here’s the letter:

HENRY McMASTER
ATTORNEY GENERAL

Mr. Jim Buckmaster
CEO, craigslist
1381 9th Avenue
San Francisco, California 94122

I hope you will take immediate steps to end craigslist from being used to facilitate harmful activities in
South Carolina.

As you are aware, in November 2008 you entered into an agreement with forty state attorneys general and
the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to install safeguards to combat unlawful activity and
improve public safety on the craigslist internet classified service. This occurred after law enforcement officers
across the country called attention to the misuse of the craigslist site to facilitate unlawful activity.

Recent national events, along with ongoing law enforcement efforts in South Carolina, indicate that
craigslist has not installed sufficient safeguards since November to prohibit the Internet site from being used as a vehicle to advertise or solicit prostitution.

Also of concern is the unrestricted manner in which graphic pornographic pictures are posted and displayed
by users on the craigslist site and their accessibility to minors.

Many of the classified and communication services on the craigslist site provide the public with a valuable
service. However, it appears that the management of craigslist has knowingly allowed the site to be used for illegal and unlawful activity after warnings from law enforcement officials and after an agreement with forty state attorneys general.

Therefore, please be advised that the craigslist management may be subj ect to criminal investigation and
prosecution by this office if the portions of the Internet site dedicated to South Carolina and its municipal regions and which contain categories for and functions allowing for the solicitation of prostitution and the dissemination and posting of graphic pornographic material are not permanently removed on or before 5:00pm EST, the close of business Friday May 15,2009.

Yours very truly,

Henry McMaster

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My friend Keith Teare solved that problem, though, by using a combination of a Craigslist listing for a computer he wanted to sell with a Google Docs spreadsheet and form to take bids on the item. Here’s how he did it.

Here’s the listing for his Power Mac G5. He points to a form (created with Google Docs) to accept bids, and a read-only spreadsheet showing the various bids. Each entry was timestamped, so he was able to cut off bids at the appropriate end time.

Bids ranged from $50 to $750 (although the high bid came in too late). The final price was $690. A total of 11 bids were placed.

Screen shots are below.

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eBay is having second thoughts about how easy it will be to spread the Kijiji brand in the U.S. The company is testing out the name “eBay Classifieds” in two cities, San Antonio and Pittsburgh. A letter sent out to Kijiji members states:

We here at Kijiji thought it made a lot of sense to start using the eBay brand name. After all, we are part of the eBay family and we are a classifieds site…so “eBay Classifieds” just seemed like a good idea.

Maybe it also has something to do with the “j”s and “i”s blending together beyond recognition in “Kijiji.” It’s not just the name that needs work. The number of visitors to Kijiji sites worldwide was up only 7 percent in January to 23.2 million, while Craigslist grew six times faster and widened the gap. It ended January with 41.4 million unique visitors (see comScore chart below).

In the U.S., Kijiji is experiencing much stronger growth, but its 3.7 million unique visitors in January is only a tenth of that of Craigslist (which had 39.4 million U.S. unique visitors, see second chart below). A year ago, Kijiji vowed to become No. 1 in the U.S. It is still far from that goal. And Oodle, which just signed a deal to power Facebook’s classifieds (in addition to MySpace’s and AOL’s), is catching up from below.

Kijiji is going to need more than a name change to challenge Craigslist.

Above is the global chart, below is the U.S. chart.

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How bad is the economy? In an effort to raise money for his rent, one man named Victor is trying to sell his Digg account on Craigslist for $650. It’s not because Victor is a power user on Digg. The name of the account is “youtube” His post on Craigslist reads:

Hello Craigslist community, my name is Victor and I’m a freelance web designer. Due to the current economic crisis I’m facing a lot of financial problems, bills are piling up and I don’t have enough work to cover them.

My rent is due and I don’t have the money to pay for it so I decided to put my Digg account for sale and see if I can make my rent money that way…

The account is somewhat valuable because it’s named YouTube and all of you know what YouTube is.

. . . My rent is $650 per month, hence the asking price.

Unfortunately, it is against Digg’s Terms of Service to:

use as a Digg User ID a name subject to any rights of a person other than you without appropriate authorization, . . . attempt to impersonate another user or person; sell or otherwise transfer your profile.

So I wouldn’t buy that Digg account, but if anyone is looking for a Web designer Victror’s services are available.

Update: Unfortunately, Digg has canceled Victor’s account. But I’ve set up a TipJoy account for him below. Give him a dollar to help him with his rent, if you’ve got the spare change. All proceeds will go to Victor.

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Every aspect of Corkin has a social element to it; users can comment on listings, comment on photos, reply to comments, send direct messages, etc. and the company founders believe this makes them a better service than Craigslist, eBay / Kijiji and the countless other classifieds sites you can find on the net. The site sports the same spartan look Craigslist does (but including annoying in-your-face ads), and the founders of Corkin realize that they’re going to have to fight an uphill battle trying to beat them.

They’re going to take a crack at it by adding a couple of features they say users are currently missing on Craigslist, like search within a mile radius, upload as many features as they like, etc. and they’re also boasting about the fact that they’ll be able to counter spam more efficiently than Craigslist and yield more qualitative responses to ads for their registered members.

I’m not convinced that’s going to be enough of a reason for people to switch from the leading classifieds websites, who’ve been around for years and get visited by tens of millions of people every month, but can’t blame them for trying. You never know how much of an advantage the founders’ previous experience will be: Paul Kats and Keith Boster were original team members of MySpace, Keith being one of two individuals who wrote the first version of MySpace.com code and Paul having served as the startup’s first performance and scaling engineer.

Here’s an interview LuckyStartups did with Kats:

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CLHack

CLHack is a destination site that pulls in Craigslist listings and lets users view them by photos. Hover over any photo and expand the view. Click it to pull up listing content. Users can search only listings with photos, browse by price, and search full text or titles only.

This is a really useful way of checking out Craigslist content. However, much like the ill-fated Craigs Little Buddy, which was banned in August, there’s a very good chance Craigslist will be banning them too. So don’t get too comfortable with it just yet.

CraigsToolbox

CraigsToolbox is a really useful tool that any heavy Craigslist user will want to start using right away. It’s a plugin for Firefox and IE that changes the experience on Craigslist directly, so you just continue to go to the site directly. The difference is, listings with photos are pulled right into the results page, so you can view them before clicking. The plugin is free to try, and costs $9.99 after a free trial period.

The demo video below shows it in action. And unlike CLHack, CraigsToolbox is unlikely to be banned. First because it’s harder, and second because its effectively just a GreaseMonkey-like change that doesn’t decrease user engagement with the site.

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The survey revealed surprising (I use the term sarcastically) facts such as:

• 90% of Americans have at least one unused item lying around the house
• Unused electronics items can be found in more than 2/3 of households (70%)
• 38% of men are holding onto old electronics, compared to 35% of women

Want to sell that junk? You won’t get much for it. The average purchase price and resale value is below. Ebay turns those lemons into lemonade though: “Although you may not get much money back in some cases, it’s better than nothing – especially in these tough economic times. And we all know how quickly the value of electronics depreciates, so those poor saps holding onto their first-generation iPhones should probably unload them ASAP!”

Get that stuff on Kijiji pronto! On a side note, I wish we had unlimited amounts of money to commission random surveys.

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Other than that general idea, detail are skimpy at this point. But the company has raised $1.5 million from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and angel investors Dmitry Shapiro (founder of Veoh) and Alex Bard (founder of Goowy, which was recently sold to AOL). Both Shapiro and Bard also sit on iList’s board of directors.

iList won’t be the first service to enter the social classifieds field. On Facebook alone, there are already plenty of marketplace applications that tap into your social network, including one from Facebook itself (called Marketplace) and one from eBay (eBay Marketplace). There is also Neighborhoods and ShopIt. So the field is pretty crowded, but that is not to say that anyone has cracked the social classifieds nut just yet. (And Craigslist is interestingly absent).

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Microsoft Live Expo, their experiment with classified listings that launched in early 2006, will be shut down on July 31, says a notice posted on the site. New listings have already been suspended.

This comes as Craigslist solidifies its position as the top free listings service. Other services like Kijiji (owned by eBay) and Oodle (which recently partnered with Walmart) continue to grow. Recently Kijiji has made waves about their impressive growth rate. And other classified listing startups continue to get funded.

There’s just no room for Microsoft in the classified listings space, it seems. It joins the deadpool.

A screen shot of what it looked like in the good days is below.

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The listings are free, which means Walmart is likely doing the deal to generate page views and advertising impressions. They also now compete with both Craigslist and eBay-owned Kijiji.

Walmart has a mixed history of success with Web businesses, but Walmart.com attracts 26 million visitors a month in the.U.S., according to comScore. Amazon attracts 47 million.

The classifieds listing’s went up quietly last week on Walmart’s site. The deal should help Oodle compeet against eBay’s Kijiji, which recently passed it in in the U.S., with 2 million unique visitors in April, versus 1.3 million for Oodle. Both trail way behind Craigslist, which has 30 million uniques, and is currently embroiled in a nasty lawsuit with eBay over Kijiji’s market entry into the U.S.

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