The report links Craigslist to 330 crimes and 12 deaths in the U.S. in 2010, and a total of 20 deaths since the classified's launch in 1995.
After Oodle released the study, Craigslist CEO went ballistic on the report, slamming it, and with good reason.
The study has the incredibly sensationalist title "Crime and Craigslist: A sad tale of murders and more" and starts like this:
"Craigslist: A site of murder and mayhem":
Sadly, Craigslist has become a cesspool of crime. Murders. Rapes. Robberies. Hitman-for-hire. Assault. Fraud. Rental rip-offs. Unfortunately, these are everyday occurrences involving people who use Craigslist to buy or sell, or for worse. And the old rules — "meet in public;" "always tell someone where you’re going;" "know who you’re dealing with" — often don’t work on Craigslist.
Oodle says it is different from Craigslist due to accountability. All transactions are tied to a user's Facebook account, whereas on Craigslist all accounts and emails are anonymous. The Marketplace app has moved to 14 million unique users.
Adds Oodle CEO Craig Donato:
We were doing some focus groups, how they used online classifieds and it was pretty clear that interactions that began anonymously led to face-to-face encounters, and flaky behavior. What really struck us in all the focus groups was that everyone cited a close call, or where they felt really scared. We just asked [AIM, the research group] to look at problems and crimes associated with online classifieds, and it quickly zoned in on Craigslist, which has the lion's share.
In the report, AIM noted the following, which then caused Buckmaster's largest outburst:
To be absolutely fair, Craigslist as an entity can't be blamed for the things that happen among its users. It's merely a facilitator of commerce, after all. And we understand thousands or even tens of thousands of transactions happen safely between Craigslist aficionados. Long before Craigslist, even, robberies were linked to newspaper classifieds from time to time. But that's no longer an excuse that Craigslist can hide behind.
Buckmaster, defending his company snapped back:
Classified listings scraper/aggregator and CL wannabe Oodle has paid AIM Group to falsely portray Craigslist as fraught with criminal activity. If you strip away the false (and defamatory) paid-for editorial however, and look at the numbers AIM uses, a very different story emerges.
Sounds scary until you compare that number to the 570 million classified ads posted by 100 million or more U.S. Craigslist users during that same time span, generating literally BILLIONS of human interactions, many involving face-to-face meetings between users who do not know one another. AIM Group facetiously writes 'we understand thousands or even tens of thousands of transactions happen safely between Craigslist aficionados.'
THOUSANDS??? Shame on you AIM Group (and Oodle). You know better. Try HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS or BILLIONS of safe transactions.
Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 26 Feb 2011 17:26
