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Craigslist does serve as a platform where people help each other for the basics, and also, shows people that the Internet is good for mutual support. I do feel pretty good about that.

Craigslist is about authenticity. Craig has paid his dues, and people respect him.

Every day the choristers of the social web chirp their advice about openness and trust; craigslist follows none of it, and every day it grows.

Sometimes entire categories of craigslist are rendered nearly unusable by spam. Con artists prowl the listings, paying sellers with fake cashier's checks and luring buyers to share their credit card numbers.

Freelancers are 'free' because they take risks - they don't like being told what to do. That's both exciting and daunting, because you have to police you.

As I've said before, free money scams are a problem.

New online formats gutted the newspaper-ad business. Why pore over tiny print looking for a job in the want ads when you can tap a few keywords into monster.com, then click through and apply? Why pay a steep per-character rate for a classified when you can hawk a whole garage full of used stuff on EBay or Craigslist for free?

If you can afford to advertise, you don't need to.

I think there are a lot of honest people doing honest business on online auctions. But the control on these Web sites is pretty minimal.

I used to do promo work, where you would be paid not very much to stand in the street for a very long time endorsing a product that you'd either A, never heard of, or B, didn't like.