On Craigslist dating and web developers

Okay, I don’t really keep up with all the sneaky shit that people do on Craigslist Wild Encounters, etc. but this one is a doozy.

So I’m out having beers at Eddie Rickenbacker’s with my fellow Stanford alum MJR. After we’ve exhausted our supply of stupid tech gossip and other industry happenings, talk turns to my friend’s personal life. I ask him where he met his girlfriend and he replies like a real straight shooter, “Craigslist!! Worked like a charm the first time itself!“.

I start to laugh my ass off in disbelief when MJR, a true web geek takes it one step farther.

“I really wanted to a/b test which picture would work the best.”

Pause.

If you know what a/b tests are, you are likely busting your guts. If you don’t, skip this post.

So basically, here are the steps for you Craigslist daters:

• Host the image on your own server when you post the ad. I didn’t even think you could do <img src/> on Craigslist with src pointing to a third party site. Live and learn.
• Rotate through the images on your server
• Measure response rates. Could be via a post-fact questionnaire but I wouldn’t mind more details from MJR on how to do this. Is there a way to connect a click on the “send email” link with a particular img file? Since the click event can’t be logged by third party server apart from Craigslist, how do you do this?

All in all, hilarious, though.