Category: Misc

I posted this tweet today, and I thought I would expand on the story for anyone who might be interested. The comment from Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster came during an interview at Mesh, the Toronto web conference that I started with a few friends in 2006, which ran until 2016 (I wrote a longer retrospective about Mesh here). Buckmaster was a speaker in 2007 — we tried to get Craigslist founder Craig Newmark to come but we got Jim instead; years later I would get to know Craig through a journalism conference in Perugia.

Jim did a one-on-one interview with my friend and Mesh co-founder Mark Evans (this made for a somewhat amusing image, to me at least, because Jim is six foot eight and Mark is about five foot seven). After the interview, there was time for questions, and someone asked how much Craigslist spent on marketing. “We don’t do any marketing,” Jim said (I am paraphrasing). “We don’t even have a marketing department.” I saw some heads turn and people clearly surprised that a website that was the ninth largest in the world at the time didn’t have a marketing department.

Continue reading ““We make plenty of money already””

As Trung Phan points out in this post on X, Taylor Swift’s concert tour made over $2 billion in ticket revenue — so not including merchandise, etc. That’s almost twice as much as the previous highest-grossing tour, which was U2 with $1.1 billion, and their tour was only two years ago. Even if you factor in higher ticket prices due to inflation etc. that is a massive increase.

According to People, Taylor has handed out close to $200 million in bonuses to the performers in her tour, and to the truck drivers and other staff.

If you are not following Sheehan Quirke, also known as The Cultural Tutor, you are missing out. Each thread is like a mini classical education in painting, architecture, theology, etc. Also has a newsletter called Areopagus which I highly recommend