Public Net Service
“Being badgered for quarterly financial forecasts doesn’t jibe very well with our public service ethos.” Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craig’s List. in the Telegraph.
Craig’s list charges for recruitment ads in just three major US cities. Otherwise it’s a free public service that people can build their lives on - a place to find a spouse, job, house, car… It is the world’s seventh most visited English language website, and employs just 19 people.
The “public service ethos” is where the net is at nowadays. Cheap and thrusting commercialism does not work. Greed is not necessarily good for you online. The ideal of providing a high quality service is what is required. Internet entrepreneurs are the Lord Reiths of today.
A public service broadcaster like the The BBC finds that its biggest competitor is not CNN, but the net. This is backed up by recent figures showing that people in the UK spend more time surfing the web now, than they do watching TV. And you can bet that most people start their web surfing with companies like Craig’s list and Google that provide high quality, free public services, with lofty aims such as organising the world’s information. They have just as many, if not more, users as the broadcasters, but far, far lower overheads. In the end, the BBC will be brought down not by its high quality output, but by the heating bill for its buildings.
