Popular website Craigslist launches environmental nonprofit network.

Craigslist Foundation turns its energy to green networking

Today: the personals. Tomorrow: the world?

Since its founding in 1995, Craigslist has gained a devoted following in cities around the world. As filmmaker Michael Ferris Gibson showed in his recent documentary "24 Hours on Craigslist," http://24hoursoncraigslist.com/ the online community board brings strangers together for all sorts of transactions and revelations. Now the website’s namesake foundation — whose raison d’être is strengthening community by supporting local nonprofits — is developing a new environmental network.

Craigslist Foundation’s Environmental Non-Profit Network http://www.enpn.org/ is still taking shape, but it will likely include both social and technological components. Its debut in Craigslist’s home base, the San Francisco Bay area, has already attracted the interest of hundreds of local organizations. The foundation’s executive director, Darian Heyman, says the network could eventually expand to play a national role.

Starting things off the old-school way, ENPN will sponsor a face-to-face event in San Francisco on June 1 as part of celebrations marking U.N. World Environment Day http://www.grist.org/news/daily/2005/05/31/2/index.html , which the city is hosting. Uber-activist Julia Butterfly Hill http://www.grist.org/news/daily/2004/10/06/2/index.html , an adviser to the nascent network, will be ENPN’s keynote speaker.

Steering committee members hope this event will be the beginning of big things to come. They envision giant-scale activism in the form of a 2006 Earth Day mass march; edutainment/theater that will stir the public to demand changes in public policy; and cell-phone technology that will put green-purchasing information at consumers’ fingertips.

Craigslist Foundation isn’t reinventing the wheel. But it is joining those who are helping a struggling movement get back on its feet. And it offers something that many other organizations just don’t have: international cachet — even hipness. As the new network unfolds, observers repeat a cautious mantra: Craigslist has the power to make this work.

By Erica Gies

Full Story: http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2005/06/01/gies-craigslist/

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Craigslist.org taking cheap shot at the classifieds

By Randall Stross
The New York Times

These days, triple-digit annual growth rates are rare among major websites. Meet that rarity: Craigslist.

Exceptional, too, is the ability to draw 10 million unique visitors each month without ever relying on venture capital or equity markets. And the ability to attain fourth place among general-interest portals without spending a penny on marketing.

Signal accomplishments, to be sure, fit for boasting in an annual report. But Craigslist is a privately held company that has no such reports, and no burning interest in the competitive fray.

Full Story: http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_2781358