BUCKMASTER ATTACKS BACKPAGE...AGAIN

We question Jim Buckmaster's motivations with regards to his latest attacks on backpage.com. He is well aware that we moderate content and he has painstakingly trolled our content to find the most controversial postings. His blog does not represent the vast majority of legal content found on our site. It appears to us Jimmy doesn't like the competition and is using his blog to trash us.

Here are some examples of Jimmy's hypocrisy:

• He cited examples where backpage ads wouldn't pass his moderation standards. Well, here are two ads clearly indicating code terms for anal sex that he failed to remove from his own site. Careful, these links contain adult-oriented images.

1. * B-B-B-J ,G*R*E*E*K, C*I*M &ASK ABOUT MORE


2. Specializing in --- G.`R.`E.`E.`K.` --- And any other service you can think of.

• Canada deserves the same protections as the US. Craigslist does not collect credit card info for postings in the adult categories in Canada. Why wouldn't he want to better prevent under aged adult service postings in Canada by requiring payment to post?

• Craigslist is well aware adult ad posters have migrated to personals where it is free to post. Charging the user is the best way to deter a post by an under aged person. Backpage is now charging in these categories to control these postings. We trolled thru Craigslist personals and found numerous sex acts pics and adult postings. Why are they still free in sexually oriented categories?

We led the way in the past when we charged for adult postings and craigslist was free, unmoderated, and out of control. Backpage is now taking further steps to control postings by charging in personals categories prone to abuse. We think Craigslist may wish to follow suit in their personals categories. Charging the user is the best way to insure a posting conforms to a site's terms of use.

Backpage.com employs a large staff to moderate content. The site uses moderation, automated filters and user reporting to remove postings that violate our terms of use. Instead of attacking other sites, we plan to move forward on our plans to add more staff and development resources to improve our own moderation efforts.

We are very proud of the robust classified community we have grown over the last few years serving all categories of classified users. We have become the second largest all purpose classified site in North America, but Craigslist is still 20 to 30 times larger. We are OK with that as we continue to grow and constantly upgrade our ability to serve our users but we wonder why the CL 800 pound gorilla has such enmity for us. Are they afraid of competition?

- Carl

"STUMBLE" UPON BACKPAGE

By far, one of the coolest ways to explore the internet these days is StumbleUpon.

From Wikipedia:

StumbleUpon is an Internet community that allows its users to discover and rate Web pages, photos, and videos. It is a personalized recommendation engine which uses peer and social-networking principles.

Web pages are presented when the user clicks the "Stumble!" button on the browser's toolbar. StumbleUpon chooses which Web page to display based on the user's ratings of previous pages, ratings by his/her friends, and by the ratings of users with similar interests. Users can rate or choose not to rate any Web page with a thumbs up or thumbs down, and clicking the Stumble button resembles "channel-surfing" the Web. StumbleUpon also allows their users to indicate their interests from a list of nearly 500 topics to produce relevant content for the user. There is also one-click blogging built in as well.

Help other users 'stumble' to backpage, and your ads, by giving us a thumbs-up. Click here to submit us to StumbleUpon!

BACKPAGE CONTINUES TO GROW; SETS NEW RECORDS FOR AD POSTINGS, TRAFFIC

2010 has gotten off to a great start! We've set new records for ad postings and traffic. Alexa seems to be the most reliable and accurate public reporting site recording our increases in traffic.

The bottom line: we continue to deliver more response for your postings each and every week.

[caption id="attachment_241" align="aligncenter" width="414" caption="Graph representing Backpage's substantial traffic increases courtesy Alexa.com"][/caption]

BACKPAGE EXPANDS TO INCLUDE OVER 400 CITIES, REGIONS

I'm proud to announce that we've finally crossed the 400 site threshold. Backpage.com is now available to users from New York to Los Angeles, Tijuana to Toronto, Washington D.C. to Washington State, Hawaii to Nova Scotia, the deserts of the Southwest to the marshes of the Southeast and everything in between.

We're not stopping there, though. We already have hundreds of more sites planned, including more international sites! It's a big world out there, so we still have a long way to go. Try telling me that you can't get rid of that piece of crap couch now, pal.

Stay tuned and, of course, feel free to let me know where you'd like to see the next Backpage site pop up!

- Carl

$1 CHARGE TO POST IN PERSONALS NOW IMPLEMENTED IN MOST CITIES

We are now charging to post ads in our Personals section in most cities. It wasn't an easy decision for us to make, but we ultimately felt is was the only thing we could do to protect users and make the user experience more beneficial.

The spam was very heavy in Personals and very difficult for us to manage. After fielding many great user suggestions on how to deal with the problem, we found that users would like to pay a very small fee so that their ad would not get buried. 99% of spammers are not willing to pay to post their ads.

Users who post in Personals can now post with confidence knowing that their ads will not get buried under spam. Additionally, this lowers the likelihood of users responding to fake ads. We've also implemented a feature which allows users ads to stay online for 365 days in most Personal categories which means more bang for your buck (literally...a buck).

If you want to remain completely anonymous, get an AMEX or VISA gift card, which are sold at most grocery stores and online. They work just like credit and debit cards, only they are prepaid, and no personal data is attached to them.

- Carl