When Non-Profits Attack

Kedrosky quotes a Times story on Craiglist.

In Sunday's paper the Times has a different take on the Craigslist story. The piece muses about how difficult it can be to compete with companies who refuse to play fair and extract the maximum they can from their chosen market. I'm not sure it's really a trend, but it's a good hook for a story about Craigslist, LaLa.com, and Chowhound:

These are new-media ventures that leave the competition scratching their heads because they don't really aim to compete in the first place; their creators are merely taking advantage of the economics of the online medium to do something that they feel good about. They would certainly like to cover their costs and maybe make a buck or two, but really, they're not in it for the money. By purely commercial measures, they are illogical. If your name were, say, Rupert or Sumner, they would represent the kind of terror that might keep you up at night: death by smiley face.

We might speculate what happens to other industries - coughaerospacecough - if this meme infects their industry. The high capital costs make this unlikely. Of course.