On: Craigslist Adult Services Shut Down Worldwide

[noarchy]

I don't see how a loss of tens of millions in revenue qualifies as "irrelevant". Even if it wasn't part of their business plan, it is money lost.

[derefr → noarchy]

Because it's money they weren't planning on making, and could easily replace severalfold through one of several quick, simple changes to their site if they cared to. They weren't re-investing it in the business, using it to grow or hire; it was simply sitting in their coffers or being paid out as bonuses and charity donations. In short, if you consider Craigslist a black box, losing this income source will have no visible effect on the external operations of that black box—it will be as if it hadn't happened.

[anamax → noarchy]

The relevance to the biz depends on where that revenue was going.

Suppose that $100M/year had been going into Craig Newmark's bank account and he had been contributing that money to charity on a regular basis.

Reducing that $100M to $30M would be irrelevant as far as Craigslist-the-company is concerned even though it would be a big hit to the charities.

Craigslist is believed to be owned by a couple of people plus EBay's 25%, so the above scenario is possible.