Declassified Craigslist Info

Data from the latest Pew Internet Project survey shows that Craigslist is proving that classifieds just want to be free. The Pew Internet Projectsurvey show that the number of people visiting classified sites went up by 80 percent during the past year while Craigslist's reach grew at nearly double that rate, to 8.7 million unique users in September.

While the growth of free sites is great news for anyone looking for a temporary sublet or trying to sell a guitar, it's not so good news for the non-free Yahoo Classifieds, whose reach dropped by 42 percent. (Even Puppydogweb.com now gets more unique users!)

Craigslist's continued growth by word of mouth is impressive as online classifieds use has increased to now include 32 million Americans. Companies looking to charge for classifieds are going to find it nearly impossible to compete unless they can find a value-add such as a much better interface or greater granularity in searching lists.

But being free could become overwhelming for Craigslist one day if it continues to grow so rapidly. If hundreds or thousands of people start posting to a single category each day, the listing could become so lengthy as to be unusable.