Things heated up at Real Estate Connect when Craigslist founder Craig Newmark crashed the first panel of the day. Under fierce cross-examination, he revealed some hints about the future of Craigslist's real estate listings:
Craig Newmark: "We're strongly thinking about [charging for listings]. Brokers are asking us to do that to improve quality. The first step will be opening up a broad discussion of how to do it right. That's going to be a fascinating discussion that will increase my customer service work a great deal? Right now the newspapers are perturbed by the fact that we seem to be getting classifieds that they aren't. I tell them that's not their big problem. The big problem for them is loss of trust. People don't trust mainstream media to ask difficult questions and be persistent. The most trusted name in news is Jon Stewart and the Daily Show. But the whole nature of mass media is changing and will probably change abruptly in three to five years."
More after the jump, including Craig declaring, "I have no Batman fantasy."
More snippets from Brad Inman's conversation with Craig Newmark:
Craig: "We now see a lot of for sale listings on the site, for sale by owner and brokers posting. We might have to split that up into a couple of different categories..."
"The problems we