My very charming Conversation with Craig Newmark

Here is the audio, video, and transcript.  Here is part of the episode summary:

Tyler and Craig discuss why webpage design has gotten worse for 30 years, what Craig’s “obsessive customer service disorder” taught him about human nature, why trusting people and maintaining a nine-second rule for scams aren’t as contradictory as they sound, why roommate ads are a better way to find love, why Craigslist never added seller evaluations, why Leonard Cohen speaks to him more than Bob Dylan, what William Gibson’s Neuromancer got right about the internet, why Jackson Lamb is now one of his role models, why large foundations lose accountability, what two painful Ivy League grants taught him philanthropy, what he gets from rescuing pigeons, the hard lesson he learned about confronting people who lie for a living, his favorite TV shows and movies, the one genuine luxury he can’t go without, what he still needs to learn, and much more.

Excerpt:

COWEN: What is scarce in your life then? You’re giving away money. You don’t have to run the company on a day-to-day basis. We’d all like more years to live, but what is it that if you had more of it, you could be more effective with?

NEWMARK: I guess, ideally, I would have more social skills—meaning, some.

COWEN: We’re simulating social skills just fine here.

NEWMARK: That’s the phrase I use. At least on my part, what looks like social skills is just fakery. I can do it for short amounts of time, maybe 90 minutes. I’ve given up, though, on actually accumulating social skills, getting better at it. More to the point, I try to get into positions where other people can show social skills.

COWEN: One journalist once described you as having “obsessive customer service disorder.” Isn’t that a social skill?

NEWMARK: That’s more obsession, so it’s pathological, but a good one. I believe that you should treat people like you want to be treated. Think of the many times that you needed customer service. Sometimes you can get good customer service, but that’s the exception. That’s no reason for us not to provide a good customer service. Like earlier today, someone sent in a grant proposal, and I had to tell them that they forgot to sign the thing, a very minor thing. More importantly, I’m telling people they need to do some planning for good communications because their work is much less valuable if they can’t talk about it effectively.

COWEN: According to Susan Freese, who wrote about you, in one year, you answered 40,000 customer service emails. Is that possibly true? If so, what did you learn about humanity doing that?

Recommended, charming and engaging throughout.