blog.backpage.com

Wow!  Thank you for a great year. Users like you are the sole reason why the site doubles in traffic each year to now nearly a billion page views per month.

backpage.com 2009 growth

New Promo Code:
As a special thanks to you, feel free to use our new promo code as often as you like for a 10% discount: thanks2010 * Promo code expires on March 31st.

Summary of 2009 development:

• Speed: we spent a lot of time the past few months making the site faster.
• Auto Repost: it now has an option to re-post your ad to the top every 3, 7 or 30 days for as little as 50 cents.   * Available in most categories.
• Move an ad to the top: you can “move your ad to the top” daily using your verification link or the ad management link in your user account.    * Available in paid categories only.
• We added 200 or more cities: you can post ads in all or any combination of cities with one posting form. It’s a paid option and incredibly convenient.    * Click here to post ads in multiple cities.
• Development is already underway to add another 100 cities in February.
• Our affiliate program has successfully gone through beta testing and is now public: get paid 10% commission on any upgrades purchased by new users you refer to us. Some affiliates make $1000’s per month on promoting and posting on backpage.    * Sign up here and then post links on your websites, blogs, or social networking pages to start making money.
• Markets merged to create a “state” sites: in some markets, users can browse content by city or state. Example:  illinois.backpage.com.    * We still have more work to do in other states.
• Improved popular searches: you can use this to see the words users to search our site. Example: http://dallas.backpage.com/online/classifieds/PopularSearches

- Carl

We’ve had a few complaints over the past few days of users responding to ads, specifically ones in our Adult and Personals sections, and receiving a phishing email from an auto-responder.

These emails are written to look like a personal response, but they contain links to external websites (that aren’t owned and operated by us) asking for credit card and other personal info. Backpage.com DOES NOT require any credit card information to respond to ads, under any circumstances. If you respond to an ad and are asked to go to a site that looks like backpage to enter credit card information, please simply forward these to abuse@backpage.com

It’s also important to note that Backpage.com does not operate under any other domain names. If you click a link claiming to be from backpage, make sure that the URL in your browsers navigation toolbar is pointed to “http://www.backpage.com” or “http://dallas.backpage.com”, etc.

Here’s an example of an email one of our users received and a screen shot of the seemingly innocuous ad he responded to…

From: “**********@ztxmail.com

To: “**********@yahoo.com”

Date: September 23, 2009 12:27:52 PM PDT

Subject: Tonight?

Hey I haven’t heard back from you since your last reply. I hope you understand my need to be safe.. Not looking for trouble hehe.. Anyway I signed up with backpagescam.com (link edited) to do my verifications. I only hook up with guys I know are of age and safe. A lady can’t be too careful these days. Once u complete the form, Backpage will email you a 4 digit code. Then call me soon and we’ll set something up. My phone number is: XXX-X61-9380… the four digit code you receive is the first 4 of my number.

Click to Enlarge

Please be on the lookout for ads like these and try to remain aware of any links you click on claiming to be from backpage.com asking for credit card or other sensitive information.

- Carl

We all know that CAPTCHA, the challenge-response security feature found on most websites nowadays, is a pain. However, most people also understand that it’s a necessary evil. We here at Backpage use it to thwart evil-doers who use spam to peddle their schemes and bots who would seek to exploit our services and harass our users.

After CAPTCHA offended one Backpage user so badly, he claims the very foundation of his company came undone. In fact, in a letter from the users’ attorney, it offended a girl, who was spamming our site performing “data entry work” on behalf of the user, so badly that the traumatic event left his employee shattered and in ruin.

What randomly generated word was the user asked to enter that could generate such chaos, you ask? The most terrible and offensive kind of all; a “slang expression for female genitalia”. At least, that’s what their attorney claims in a poorly written letter he sent us a while back.

"This seems reasonable", we thought to ourselves.

As we all know, when fabricating a lawsuit, it is considered bad etiquette to demand anything under a quarter million dollars. Knowing this, the user, being the fine and upstanding businessman he is, has demanded we pay him $320,000 in “damages”.

For those of you keeping score at home that’s THREE HUNDRED AND TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS.

I could go on and on about how the word “pussy” isn’t a word that’s entirely uncommon to hear on network television nowadays or that it wouldn’t be a shock to see it in an elementary school library, but what I really want to know is…does anyone else see the irony here? Come on. Is it just me or is this guy being a pussy?

- Carl

As promised, we’re launching more and more new cities for users to post in all the time. As of today (7/31/09), we’ve expanded even further into parts of Arizona, Canada, California, Florida, Oklahoma, Massachusetts and South Carolina, to name a few. We feel that this will not only serve the members of those communities well, but will also help our national advertisers reach even more users. The newest markets launched as of today (7/31/09) are:

Stillwater, OK

Lawton, OK

South Coast, MA

Cape Cod, MA

Worcester, MA

Hilton Head, SC

Florence, SC

New Brunswick, Canada

Sierra Vista, AZ

Yuma, AZ

Flagstaff, AZ

Prescott, AZ

Merced, CA

Modesto, CA

Visalia, CA

Lethbridge, AB

Ft. McMurray, AB

Lakeland, FL

As per user request, we’re working on a lot of new markets over here, so you can expect to see more and more popping up on the homepage, as well as on this blog. New markets on the homepage are noted with red “(new)” text next to them.

More than anything, we rely on our community for input and suggestions. If your city isn’t on the homepage, send an email to carl at backpage dot com (format as mail@isp.com) and tell me about it!

- Carl

…and yet still has images of sex acts on his site.

On his official craigslist blog, Jim Buckmaster, the CEO of craigslist, continues to post links to adult ads on backpage. His latest post attacks backpage for containing salacious words and images, and goes on to suggest some kind of conspiracy between politicians and newspapers, hypothesizing that politicians have a “need for positive stories and campaign endorsements from those very same newspapers.”  He also theorizes of a conspiracy inside the newsrooms of America:

“Is it possible that writing stories critical of craigslist’s (relatively tame) “adult service” section is more career-friendly than attacking their own employer (or journalistic media brethren) for operating a (far more graphic) “adult service” section of their own?”

His latest blog entry included links to ads clearly violating our terms of use and have been removed. We would like to return the favor to Mr. Buckmaster with a list of postings on craigslist displaying images of sex acts and/or requesting sex acts for money. We are not condemning craigslist, but we are pointing out the hypocrisy of Jim Buckmaster attacking us. He clearly still has a problem of content violating his terms of use on a far larger scale.

Note: The links below are not safe for work:

Open 24 hours daily. 1oo 15min 14o 3omin 2oo h0ur….please mature
adults only. G.r.33k xtra4o

WE HAVE 3 WE WANT THAT SEXY 4TH BE WILD!!

Afternoon Delight/Chill? Vers Btm Looking

For Women Only:Erotic Tantra Massage for Women(Will Travel

Straight Athlete looking for wet mouth - m4m - 32

Bl0w~n~G0

Buckmaster is fully aware of the challenges of user generated content. He should move his blog post regarding backpage to craigslist’s rant and raves category–it’s mean spirited and probably better off being an anonymous attack. They are the words of a snitch—someone who gets caught doing something, and before they are even charged with a crime, start pointing to all the other people that do the same thing.  As a former CTO, he knows the complexity and shortcomings of filters and any other abuse mitigation technology.  And, he also is well aware Backpage started charging for adult postings to filter out illegal postings four years earlier than craigslist. We certainly did not blog last year how unfair it was for Craig to have free adult postings and many of them clear TOU violations.

The tit-for-tat seems beneath both of us given the huge challenges faced by both our companies in other categories. Bad users can post from anywhere in the world. Banned terms can be easily bypassed. Staff and development resources are already heavily used–pursuing bad users as they morph or post in other categories. Backpage has created two dozen new jobs in three major US cities, most of these jobs are for managing abuse in all categories.  If Buckmaster wants to continue to bash backpage with links to posts violating our terms of use, he should know that we welcome the links on his blog. Our abuse staff will remove the content if it is a TOU violation and we will continue to return the favor with links to craigslist ads violating his site’s terms of use for the purpose of pointing out Mr. Buckmaster’s hypocrisy.

Either way, we hope Mr. Buckmaster realizes that when you are attacked, and your constitutional rights are threatened, you don’t cave in and begin pointing fingers at your competitors. You fight.

I wanted to quickly address the outages we’ve been experiencing here and there lately. To put it simply, we’ve seen a pretty big spike in traffic over the last 2 weeks that we basically weren’t 100% prepared for. However, our staff has been working around the clock and we have spared no expense to address the issue as quickly as humanly possible.

Please hang tight and we’ll have the fast, efficient and reliable backpage you’ve all grown to know and love back and better than ever in no time!

As a result of the intermittent outages, we have received what could quite possibly be considered the most angry email that has ever been sent to support@backpage.com. Hopefully the rest of you don’t feel the same way:

To Backpage.com Support

On May 19, 2009, at 11:13 AM Anthony ________ Wrote:

> Hello Backpage,
>
> What the fucking fuck is going on with this god damned site? I go on
> here to sell a lamp and its impossible for me to do that, sell a
> simple fucking lamp. On Craiglist I can sell 100 lamps with no
> problem at all. What the hell is so hard about running a fucking
> website? I run my own Facebook and MySpace pages perfectly fine and
> I have my own HTML codes that make my profile look fuckin sick and
> you can’t manage to run a simple site where people sell bullshit?!
> Do you need me to send a pack of retards there to work on the site
> to get it fixed because I bet a pack of wild retards could do a
> better job at maintaining a website than the asswads you currently
> have there. I understand maybe you’re seeing a spike in traffic
> lately but why would that cause your site to go in the shitter and
> for users to no longer access the site at all? Its bullfuck if you
> ask me. How am I supposed to sell my god damn lamps?! And what if I
> had some shit I needed to buy? I could be sitting there eating
> cereal and my table could break and it would spill the cereal all
> over the floor and I would think OH SHIT I NEED A NEW TABLE… WELL
> I HOPE BACKPAGE ISN’T HAVE A SPIKE IN TRAFFIC TODAY OR ELSE I WON’T
> BE ABLE TO DO JACK FUCK ON THAT SITE SINCE IT CRASHES AFTER 10
> VISITORS. Fucks sake man. And I bet I wouldn’t be the only person in
> need of an immediate table, or other appliance. All I ask if for you
> to get your ass together and get this fuck shit of a site working
> properly so I can continue selling lamps or buying worthless fuck
> that just clutters up my house. Or else I will  have to go to that
> other shithole site Cragisass. Thanks.

Wow!

- Carl

We’ve been pretty busy adding to our infrastructure. We’ve had some
growing pains and some of our sponsor inventory is sold out
temporarily. We’ve put in place a solution for this and the problem
should be solved.

Here’s a quick list of some development we plan to release soon.

Affiliate sign up:
We’ll be releasing a self sign up form soon where you can add a link
on your site. You get paid commission on upgrades purchased by users
you refer. You can sign up early by sending me an email.

Auto Repost:
Users want more options on the re-posting interval. We
have a solution planned where users will be able to choose from
several re-posting intervals like 3, 7 or 30 days.

New markets:
Here’s a list of the most requested markets in the past 30 days. We
plan to do these and few more cities soon:

Gainesville, FL
Ocala
St. Augustine
Charlottesville
Danville
Fredericksburg
Harrisonburg
Lynchburg
Fayetteville, NC
Abilene
Amarillo
Laredo
Lubbock
Odessa / Midland
Winston-Salem
Appleton-Oshkosh-FDL
Green Bay
Kenosha-Racine
Milwaukee
Wausau
Sheboygan
Eau Claire
Janesville
La Crosse
Bellingham
Everett
Olympia
Chattanooga
Wyoming
Halifax
Winnipeg
Montana

If you have new markets to suggest, contact us.

Back in October we announced our intention to publicly launch beta testing for the Backpage.com affiliate program wherein users can earn commission payout’s for referring users to post on Backpage. On January 1st, 2009 we officially started public tests.

Now, nearing the end of February, public testing for the Backpage.com affiliate program is nearing completion. Some of our beta affiliates have seen large commissions. We’re confident that our program will be a huge success in 2009. If you have a web site with good traffic and would like to sign up as an affiliate, please click here to contact us .

Top 5 Beta Affiliates

Affiliate earnings for 1-01-2009 to 2-15-2009:

Christina M. - $1,670.64
Ben B. - $1,478.62
Andrea S. - $1,460.98
Daniel H. - $1,077.11
Tom P. - $742.86

The Backpage.com affiliate program will be available for all users within the next 90 days. Until then, please keep checking blog.backpage.com for updates.

- Carl

No doubt, times are tough. We’d like to help out any way we can by making it easier for job posters to staff that position they have available now that they gave that overpaid Steve from accounting the axe. Or help the down-on-their-luck find that second job to pay down their mortgage, Van Halen tribute bands (DLR era only – none of that pansy Hagar crap) book that sweet Bar Mitzvah gig or help you sell that car or truck before the bank repo’s it. Whatever the case may be, Backpage is here to help.

• …lowering the price on sponsor ads by 25% in select categories in all cities indefinitely (or until the IRS recognizes our clearly tax deductible contributions to the “Backpage.com Foundation”).
• …improving the auto repost feature in most categories to allow users to repost ads more frequently. Categories that are effected will see the durations fall from 7 days to 3 days.
• …currently testing a feature that will allow users to instantly repost their ads to the top of the listings. This will allow users to attract more visibility to their ads.
• …launching a promo code, good in all markets, for all ads and ad upgrades for 10% off all purchases. In celebration of how clever we are, we’ve named that promo code BAILOUT (expires 3/31/2009).

Another reason to support the Backpage Bailout Movement? This year we’re aiming to build more fuel efficient and green, Earth-friendly ads and with your help, we can get there. Additionally, January has proven to be a strong month for us. As the the Alexa.com Traffic Rank Trend graph below illustrates, even in a tough economy users are still posting ads and using backpage.com regularly.