Monday, December 18, 2006

Craigslist Passes the New York Times

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After blogging about Google's financial basis a few days ago I wandered over to Alexa this morning and played around comparing various sites' visit history. I came up with something I think is interesting. Compare the New York Times to Craigslist.

A three year chart of daily hits, NYT vs. Craigslist

Newspapers get a lot of their income from advertising. Advertisers go where the buyers are. Craigslist's audience is growing. The NYT audience is stagnant at best. Further, people visit Craigslist to buy, so every one of those visits is not just a potential buyer, but someone with money in their hands looking for a product. That's the ultimate reader for advertising. People visiting the NYT are probably far more likely to be looking for news. The NYT is suffering from declining revenue now and the future looks even worse.

As an update to the Google post, the Wall Street Journal has an article today suggesting that Google's income growth from interest is likely to stall. A subscription may be required to read the article. I was shocked to find out that about 1/6 of their profit came from interest income. I still don't like them as a stock. They have a market capitalization of $150B and they don't make a bloody thing.

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