Craigslist Now Has An Online TV Series

(CANVAS STAFF REPORTS) - Craigslist, a San Francisco-based classified ads site, has grown to offer the nation's communities a place to find jobs, housing, gigs, services and even partners. Now people can get a view of the users whose posts frequent the site.

According to Switched.com , Craigslist TV is a weekly web series that highlights users and their posts.

Switched reported that Los Angeles users who posted to Craigslist were asked to participate in the series. Documentary-style videos posted on the site's YouTube channel include a fashion designer who wants Sandra Bullock to wear his dress and a woman looking for a husband. There is also a man advertising himself as a "Ninja for Hire."

Producer Drew Brown told Mashable.com that an opt-in button on its Los Angeles site generated 1,000 posts per day. The first season will have 14 episodes and Brown said it would expand nationwide.

The episode about fashion designer Michael Mullen shows how Mullen used Craigslist to reach Bullock and try to get her to wear his design to the 2010 Oscars.

Switched doesn't give the series much credit.

"Obviously, Craigslist aims to use these webisodes as marketing tools, but we're not convinced that it will work," Caleb Johnson wrote. "If anything, these folks make us want to stay farther away from the classifieds site. But the videos serve another purpose: creating more reality-TV stars. Casting agents from VH1 and Bravo must be licking their chops after seeing the poor, unstable, attention-hungry souls on Craigslist TV."

Social Times reported that the series has released three videos that are generating thousands of views. Blogger Megan O'Neill questioned whether the series would draw many new users to the site, assuming most of its audience will be current users, but she said it will likely increase those users' posts.

"I think the ways Craigslist is used in these videos will inspire people to find new and creative ways to use the classifieds site," she wrote.