Social Media Club NY: Discussion with Craig Newmark, Craigslist Founder (audio)

Last evening I attended my first Social Media Club meeting in NYC. Pretty large group of about 60 professionals. My only complaint would be lack of air conditioning.

Craig Newmark from Craigslist was the featured speaker. He spoke for about 15 minutes mainly about politics and micro-finance with a sprinkling of Craigslist info. The balance of the hour were questions from the audience.

Download my audio file on RapidShare. It's one hour and 20 mb in size.

Other misc notes from Craig's discussion:

• Believes most people are trustworthy and good and that has helped the site grow.
• Craig is getting involved with small ventures that "get something done". Big into micro-finance and likes Kiva.
• "What works on the net is what works for people in general"
• Discusses that down in the sohoplex (formerly silicon alley) the great blogs are being made
• Does full-time customer service for Craigslist and works with police detectives a good bit
• "If you can't articulate what you are about in 45 seconds, people will forget you" — hrm, I guess my Video Startup Opportunity might make sense.
• His exit strategy for his customer service is… death
• How do you see mobile and SMS fitting into craigslist? I think mobile is important and people can do it on our site now. We have to think about our homepages to fit onto a smaller screen.
• Most important thing is that it's fast. We have at least 150 cheap servers.
• Is there a point that you would sell Craigslist? We are doing comfortable and to provide for our futures.

If you are interested in attending a Social Media Club event, visit their web site. I am not affiliated with the Club other than as a non-member attendee.