eBay states that no details can be provided because “some of the information about Craigslist contained in the complaint is governed by confidentiality restrictions.”“The recent actions by the Craigslist directors have disadvantaged eBay and its investment in Craigslist,” said Mike Jacobson, eBay’s senior vice president and general counsel, in a written statement. “Since negotiating our investment with Craigslist’s board in 2004, we have acted openly and in good faith as a minority shareholder, so we were surprised by these recent unilateral actions. We are asking the Delaware court to rescind these recent actions in order to protect eBay’s stockholders and preserve our investment.”
I speculate that this is a battle for ad revenue and eBay wants to get (take) a share of it without having to do any of the work itself. I also think eBay wants to have access to Craigslist's consumer behavioral data and use behavioral targeting to drive activity to its own website in order to attract more ad revenue. It’s clear that there are privacy issues here for both the companies and the users. But to what extent are these companies considered invasive to users’ privacy when sharing data? Should users speak up about it? Personally, I don’t enjoy deleting all the junk e-mails that try to offer me all sorts of products that I didn’t sign up for. But I know that I'm probably receiving them because I signed up for something else that they are affiliated with. And no matter how many times I unsubscribe, they always find a way to come back. This isn't a perfect example, but it's to give you an idea of the seemingly endless flow of marketing from companies and their affiliates.
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Using the “craigslist blog” (http://blog.craigslist.org/2008/04/tainted-love/) as a spokesperson, the company responded to the Ebay lawsuit announcement in a late-night post entitled, “Tainted Love.” With a tone reminiscent of an emotional response to a high school insult, the post states:
“Ensuring the future well-being of craigslist and the craigslist community is admittedly very important to us. But Ebay has absolutely no reason to feel threatened here — unless of course they’re contemplating a hostile takeover of craigslist, or the sale of Ebay’s stake in craigslist to an unfriendly party. (In which case, they’re out of luck.)”
So there!
With its strong community of loyal users, Craigslist is able to take advantage of its business model to make a statement while appealing to its network for support. Responses include, “You go guy. Craigslist is great.” from bill Philpott, and “Courage, folks! I know you’ll get through this.” from Tom Geller, to “Don’t give into their big business intimidation! I love craigslist…” from Malcolm. Effectively side-stepping Ebay’s claim that craigslist “dilute[d} eBay’s economic interest in Craigslist by more than 10 percent”, the post taps into the emotional loyalty of its users in lieu of a substantive battle in this forum—positioning Ebay as the big business “bad guy” and craigslist as a closely-guarded community-oriented service. No doubt, this strategy will embroil a much larger debate around the issue, with loyalists on both sides shaping the argument. I agree with Lisa, that craigslist is holding tight to its ad revenue by making outreach to its users rather than engaging the actual claims of its primary shareholder. Ebay’s response to the post will send a signal as to the fairness (and effectiveness) of this type of appeal in the context of the blogging community.
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