Slate – “While the internet has morphed and changed, the controversial classifieds site has remained largely the same—hearkening back to a time when everyone online trusted each other more….The site has changed relatively little in both functionality and appearance since Newmark launched it in 1995 as a friends and family listserv for jobs and other opportunities. Yet in spite of that, it remains a household name whose niche in the contemporary digital landscape has yet to be usurped, with an estimated 180 million visits in May 2024. Though, it’s certainly not for a lack of newcomers attempting to stake their claims on the booming C2C market; in the U.S., Facebook Marketplace, launched in 2016, is its closest direct competitor, followed by platforms like Nextdoor and OfferUp. Craigslist’s business model is quite simple: Users in a few categories—apartments in select cities, jobs, vehicles for sale—pay a small but reasonable fee to make posts. Everything else is free. Its Perl-backed tech is straightforward. The team is relatively lean, as the company considers functions like sales and marketing superfluous. This strategy has allowed Craigslist to stay extremely profitable throughout the years without implementing sophisticated recommendation algorithms or inundating the webpage with third-party advertisements. Its runaway success threatens decades-old industry gospels of growth, disruption, and innovation, and might force tech evangelists to admit they don’t fully understand what people want…” [I will add that Craigslist is where I check-in on days like these, such as when the Supreme Court makes Trump… King. I divert my despair to focus on photos and descriptions of items for sale by locality, including: farm and garden (chickens, rabbits, hay and tractor parts, and a range of plants you do not want but cannot resist buying), bicycles (never my size), really funky looking used furniture (some very old and most lacking the mid century vibe that is so critical today), books (such as they are – encyclopedias anyone?) and of course, “free stuff.” You may want to escape and shop for an old boat or toys or even some heavy equipment to keep yourself going through the next very difficult months – enjoy.]