I helped build one of the first classified ad sites

Here’s what I learned

Ben Werdmuller
Ethical Tech

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Daily Information issue one

One of Oxford’s local papers is something called Daily Information, which has been running since 1964. Originally a single sheet of carbon copied paper that was delivered to each of the colleges, by the nineties it had evolved into a brightly-colored A1 sheet that hung in colleges, pubs and other places of local interest. It contained movie listings, cartoons and reviews, all supported by classified ads.

My first job was bringing Daily Information online. Originally, this meant cycling into the office after school every day and hand-transferring the listings to a Bulletin Board System: a simple kind of server that you had to dial into directly, which only one person could use at any one time. I set up the BBS, and was responsible for copying and pasting the information from Adobe Pagemaker every day.

Daily Information, 50 years later

A year later, in 1995 (the same year Craigslist was founded as an email list), I set up its first website. I was still learning HTML, let alone Perl, so it was produced the same way: by copying and pasting from Adobe Pagemaker. This still process made some sense, because publishing was set on a daily cadence that ended with people on bicycles hand-delivering the paper in the later afternoon. Classified ads were kept in big paper files, with reference numbers and contact details for all the people who had placed them. The website had a phone number you had to call to be listed.

By 1997, we had shifted the center of gravity. The site was written in Perl, and everything was stored in a real database. There were online forms that exactly mimicked the paper ones from the files, but now the reference numbers were automatically generated by a program. You could enter ads online, but if you had to pay (for premium listings like ), you had to enter a phone number and we would call you back. A year or two later, Worldpay meant that we could take the payments online, too.

Over time, we built in a variety of moderation tools, and community platforms to augment the site. These days, the team runs a podcast, and there’s a thriving Twitter account. What Daily Info is keeps changing, which is part of the point: the community is the most important thing.

John Rose

The founder of Daily Info, John Rose, delighted in exploring new technology. He threw himself into new things, and didn’t enjoy resting on his, or anyone else’s, laurels. It was a fun, if occasionally chaotic, place to work, set on two floors in a Victorian house. John often came round at 5pm to pour everyone gin and tonics, and he gave every new employee a knife. Sometimes he would ask questions like, “aren’t other people awful?” He’s no longer with us, sadly, and I think of him very fondly. And, of course, as you now know, he was a web pioneer.

Daily Info wasn’t isolated. The office doubled as an internet cafe: we had lots of equipment, and anyone could book it by the hour. Because Oxford is an academic town, there were plenty of people who needed to come in and type up papers or photocopy documents. But as a result, we got to know the community in person, and they got to know us. We understood that behind each tiny line ad was a real person; sometimes they had been using Daily Info, and coming into the office, for decades.

Many companies tried to buy Daily Info. There are lots of big classified businesses in the world, but John wasn’t interested in selling to them — and none of them could crack Oxford. To this day, Daily Info’s Oxford is like the tenement building in Batteries Not Included, surrounded by much bigger entities.

But at the same time, John wasn’t interested in expanding beyond Oxford. Sure, he could probably have expanded to Cambridge, Durham, or other university towns. But he wanted to be a part of the local community, and chose to concentrate on serving it as best he could. He ran for local council a few times, and while he was never elected, it demonstrated his commitment to the town. Not everyone needs to be a startup with exponential growth: he grew his business steadily over 38 years. And then he left it to his daughter, Miranda, who made it even more successful in his wake, while sticking to the essence of what John had started.

Technically, it was a lifestyle business. We’re taught to sneer at these. But by staying small, Daily Info became an integral part of its community. Because it was tethered to revenue from day one, it didn’t have any investors, which gave John complete freedom to evolve what it was. By doing so, and by personally embracing the community, it survived far longer than most startups ever will.

Every time I’m back in Oxford, I stop by Daily Info to say hello. Last time I was there, they had a giant picture of my family dog on the wall. More than anywhere else I’ve ever worked, I love it. And if I ever build anything half as beloved, I will have deemed my career a success.

If you enjoyed this, click the heart below! Also, check out what’s on in Oxford, over on Daily Information’s latest site.

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Writer: of code, fiction, and strategy. Trying to work for social good.