Back in ol' USA for over a week now, LP and I have commenced apartment hunting, which in turn necessitates spending a huge amount of time on Craigslist. For the uninitiated, Craigslist in the United States serves essentially the same purpose as Trade Me does in New Zealand: a one-size fits all website where people can meet, sell-things, converse, job-hunt and look for a place to live.
Craigslist is just like Trade Me, except that it is also completely, percent insane. Set next to Trade Me, it is a pretty good indicator of the next level absurdity that can exist in America.
A little less than one million people visit the Trade Me website on any given month in New Zealand, which is pretty amazing when you consider that this means more than one in five people in our entire nation visit the site at least monthly. Craigslist has around 20 billion page views monthly. Which is interesting when you consider that the website still looks like some computer geek's abandoned high school project from When you visit the Trade Me landing page it is a vision of white space, nice lines, clean text and well thought out splashes of colour.
It is as well ordered, spacious and nice to look at as the greenest and quaintest parts of our country. It's quieter and relaxed.
Like us. Craigslist is a feast of text. You feel as if it is yelling at you before you've even clicked on anything. The apartment and job functions on Craigslist are mostly very functional. Although if you look for a job on Craigslist, any potential position you could find will come with a fairly epic "but" Crazy boss?
