Craig Newmark
lorenetworking
Programmer whose 1995 email list of San Francisco events became Craigslist, the site that moved classified advertising onto the internet and, by the same act, out of the newspapers.
The training is the part usually left out. A computer-science master's thesis on information security, seventeen years at IBM, then a move to San Francisco in 1993 as a systems security architect at a brokerage - and in 1995, from that job, an email to friends listing what was on in the city. People asked to be added; then they asked for jobs, apartments and things for sale, and he added those. By 1999 it was a company, and it became one of the most used sites on the internet by running on almost nothing: mostly free listings, a tiny staff, and a stated reliance on the users themselves to police what was posted. Two facts stand against each other and both are recorded. The site is widely held to have taken from newspapers the classified revenue that local journalism ran on, and the resulting news deserts are laid at its door; and its founder has since given, by his own account, some six hundred million dollars, first to journalism and then, increasingly, to cybersecurity and to military families. A security engineer built a trust system, watched what it did to an older one, and has spent the proceeds on the two things his thesis and his conscience pointed at.
Also known as: newmark, craigslist
Sources
- Internet Hall of Fame inductee page: while working as an IT consultant for Charles Schwab in 1995, Newmark began circulating emails to friends about events in the San Francisco Bay Area; as the list grew, users suggested job postings, items for sale and apartments, which he added; by 1999 he left consulting to incorporate Craigslist
- Internet Hall of Fame official biography: born 6 December 1952 in Morristown, New Jersey; BS 1975 and MS 1977 in computer science from Case Western Reserve, with a thesis on fundamental models of computer systems and their relationship to information security; nearly seventeen years at IBM from 1976, then Schwab and Bank of America; the site is based on a culture of trust, with participants policing the information shared
- Reporting on his later career: moved to San Francisco in 1993 as a systems security architect at Schwab; critics argue the site undermined newspapers by taking the classified advertising their revenue depended on; his philanthropy has moved from journalism toward cybersecurity and military families, about 600 million dollars by late 2025 under the banner of getting everyone to protect the country