
I'm Joining Craigslist in July (by Jeremy Zawodny) - ajbatac
http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/010361.html
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stcredzero
Craigslist should go into micropayments. Requiring a micropayment of a few
cents for posting an ad could completely shut down spammers.

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breck
For the sake of debate, I'll challenge this. As long as money is made by
spamming the site, even a micropayment wouldn't completely eradicate spam.
Profits from spamming would decrease and spam would probably drop, but only
until the expected value of each post equals the micropayment price.

Micropayments could even increase spam. People might feel entitled to take
more liberties with their posts if they are paying for them.

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stcredzero
But since the success rate for SPAM is so low, it only takes a miniscule per-
post charge to make it uneconomical. Also, the requirement for payment could
be structured to make it much harder for spammers to make arbitrary new
identities.

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notauser
Even if spam never saw a financial return, there would still be spam.

A lot of spam is purchased as a 'marketing service' by fools who _think_ spam
works, who make a payment to a third party to spam on their behalf.

As the failure happens after the payment the effectiveness or lack thereof
only modifies the decisions of repeat offenders - and even then only those who
actually learn from their mistakes.

Of course spam will stop once the world runs out of fools who think they can
get rich quick... any day now, really...

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stcredzero
The population of fools who think they can get rich quick is related to the
incidence of fools who do get rich quick. If no one gets rich spamming
Craigslist and everyone instead gets poorer because it's too expensive, then
no one will spam Craigslist.

Combine the per-post micropayment with the forfeiture of your account balance
one if you are caught spamming and I think this would be an effective
deterrent. There will be fools who will still spam. They will just do it
elsewhere.

It's like the two guys in the woods confronted by a bear. One ties his running
shows and the other asks if he could really outrun the bear. The first guy
says: "I don't have to outrun the bear, just you!"

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prakash
Curious to know if Craigslist still hands out equity to employees?

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jonknee
Probably not after the whole eBay fiasco.

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neilc
No equity at all? I doubt that. The eBay fiasco arose because one employee had
~28% equity in the company, which is far, far more than an engineer joining at
this stage could reasonably expect to receive.

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tptacek
Don't you think it had more to do with the fact that the company was
structured so that he could sell his equity to outsiders?

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adrianwaj
Relaxing read, not a heck of a lot insight though. I guess the blog kicker
means what it says "Some random bits scribbled"

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jzawodn
Sorry it wasn't more insightful. Maybe after I've been there a few weeks I'll
have more interesting things to say...

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adrianwaj
Some more thoughts about what would have happened had the Microsoft deal gone
through.

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jzawodn
That's probably best to get into after I'm not a Yahoo employee anymore,
should I decide to get into it at all of course... :-)

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milwaukeegreeny
I'm jealous. I've applied there a couple of times but could never close the
deal. Good going Jerem.

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supahfly_remix
I Farted and Would Like Everyone to Sniff It (by Jeremy Zawodny)

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nunu
We could all learn lessons in self-promotion from the blogosphere elite!

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ardit33
Do yourself and us a favor, and go back to reddit.

