Craiglist 500 times more efficient than eBay
An interesting article from the New York Times about eBay and Craigslist. This was especially interesting:
Data collected by Nielsen/NetRatings show that eBay's page views in April 2005 grew by less than half a percentage point, compared with the previous April. At Craigslist, page views grew 130 percent in the same period. According to the company's data, its traffic is now about a fifth of eBay's. And the operational efficiencies are astounding: Craigslist has 18 employees; eBay has 8,800.
Back in January, I compared eBay and Craigslist as if they were equal from my perspective, a way to get rid of stuff before I moved. In light of the last post about how inefficient modern software is, it does make you wonder why eBay needs 500 times the employees for five times the traffic. I guess they are all showing PowerPoint presentations to each other, and otherwise coordinating. If you have 8,800 people doing work it sould only take 100 people to do, I guess you have a lot of coordinating to do.
Update: Craigslist has stuff like this sentimental letter to Microsoft Word, whereas eBay is mainly about Hello Kitty.
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