Social Media Star: Craigslist Founder Craig Newmark

Craig Newmark is the well-known founder of craigslist. Since it launched in 1995, his destination for free classified ads has become one of the Internet’s top 10 most-visited sites.

Newmark is an active user of social media–he blogs, tweets, and updates his Facebook page regularly.

The Craigslist founder is a vocal advocate of organizations that are using the Internet to help solve social issues, such as DonorsChoose.org and AllforGood. He also uses social media platforms to champion the causes of organizations he supports, such as Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. In addition, Newmark advises groups on use of social media.

In spring 2011, he plans to launch craigscauses, a website that will link up people globally using social media “to bear witness to good efforts and encourage the same behavior in others.”

I was grateful to get some of Newmark’s time in-between his work as customer service representative for craigslist and his efforts on the boards of various nonprofit organizations. Below he answers my questions regarding his use of social media.

Your website is notoriously plain and simple with no technological frills, yet you are a fairly active user of social media. Why do you use these tools?

I use whatever tools in whatever style that attracts people to get the job done. Sometimes you want minimal tools, sometimes more complex tools. It’s ad hoc.

Can you list the various types of social media you use?

Twitter, Quora, Facebook, both personal profile and fan pages. Blogs: cnewmark.com, HuffPost, SF Chronicle, etc. LinkedIn.

What are your goals for your social media use? Do you have different goals for different tools?

I’d like to connect everyone on the planet for mutual benefit. All use of tools are experiments.

I know you do a lot of advocacy work. How have social media tools helped with that work?

Social media tools get the word out, connecting people of similar sensibilities.

What other benefits have you seen from your use of social media?

I know more people with passions similar to mine.

What advantages do you think they offer over other ways to communicate with people?

Social media tools allow you to find more people with similar interests across the world.

Do you draw a line between your personal and professional use of tools?

Is there a line?

What future plans do you have in terms of employing social media?

I need to make better use of nonprofit related social media tools, like Jumo, Facebook Causes, GreatNonprofits, and Charity Navigator.

Anything else you’d like to add?

Over a ten or twenty year period, I’d like to connect around seven or eight billion people for mutual benefit.

(I have no doubt that if anyone can, it’s Craig Newmark.)

Cross posted at Socialistic.

For more social media tidbits, follow me on Twitter, @evakl.

Photo: Gene Hwang, Orange Photography

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