My favorite recent story that I came across was on Wired.com. There I found an article about "Canada's dumbest car thief." This individual took a tricked-out car for a test drive, only to never return. The owner of the dealership, an internet-savvy 20-something, went straight to the automotive discussion forum Beyond.ca and posted a description of the vehicle and the suspect.

What started as a mere post on a forum branched out and used many other online tools such as Facebook and Google Maps to discover the suspect's name, address, and other personally identifying information. Since the thief kept the car parked in front of his own house, the dealership owner knew exactly where to send police, and made sure to be there to tape the arrest and post it on YouTube--a fitting online ending to a crime solved thanks to the Internet.

While the Internet is a tool often used for entertainment or research, it also offers means to track down criminals for crimes that occurred offline. The resolution of these two different cases is just so cool that it shows how much the Internet has to offer when its powers are used for good!

I still love to read the strictly platonics, the missed connections, see how outrageous apartment rental prices are, and whether there are any interesting groups I would like to join. Unlike Jane, I am not actively seeking anything specific, so I don't often perform keyword or other parameter searches to narrow down the results. But I will admit that if I am busy or if there are too many new entries, I will not take the time to read them all.

So what gets me to click?

Like Jane, I tend to avoid ad titles that are poorly worded, badly misspelled, too vague, or otherwise boring and uninteresting. If I am looking to be amused or satisfy curiosity, I will often click on entries that I know don't pertain to me, simply because their title caught my eye. Maybe it made me laugh, maybe it was a bit shocking, but whatever the case, it got me to click through.

I will of course click on ads that mention an activity I like, or ones that show the poster is of the same age. The point here is that they have provided enough detail in the title that I already know there is a commonality between me and the ad. For instance "hey what's up" as a title doesn't say what you want, but "Scrabble and other Board Games Group"lets you at least know that this will be an ad about playing board games. Having an idea of what you're going to get when you click improves the chances that an ad will be read by those most likely to be interested in what you have to offer. Taking a slightly different path and coming up with a funny or eye-catching tagline that doesn't say exactly what is inside, but entices the reader to learn more, is also a way to get more clicks to your ad. This in turn can increase your chance of success, be it in renting your apartment, adding members to your group, or getting that hot date. Which method you choose depends on what type of crowd you want to attract and how much you're willing to spend weeding out the non-serious replies.

Craigslist ad headlines can indeed be aptly compared to webpage title tags, and like any good title tag, some thought should go into their creation. Think about the searches one might conduct to reach your ad and then find a way to make it compelling enough to click in what still might be a large sea of similar offerings.

Once you start to use the site, you quickly get over the fact that it isn''t the prettiest interface out there. In fact, bells and whistles would probably hinder you from quickly getting to the content--and content is king on a site like this. Something that is often difficult to present to a client seeking a new or redesigned website is that the prettiest interface won''t save you if you have nothing substantial to offer.

I have personally used Craigslist to buy a Halloween costume, find a bookclub to join, hire freelance writers at my old job, and even meet a few new friends. I also know several people for whom finding housing or a roommate was a successful venture. In terms of its usefulness and ability to suck your time if you let it (I find the Missed Connections and "Best of" are always good for some amusement!), I feel that Craigslist is right up there with Wikipedia.

Even more amazing is the fact that Craigslist is a company with only 23 employees, yet the 7th highest ranking site in pageviews according to Alexa. As stated on Michael Slater''s blog, Craigslist is something of an anomaly, but a fascinating one at that.

Craigslist is a case study of sorts in terms of what is really important to users coming to a website for information. Content, in this case entirely user-generated, is of the utmost importance, and so Craiglist presents it to you with no frills--just a simple, easy to understand interface. Its simplicity really doesn''t do it justice, considering how powerful the site can be.

You can use the site to learn about a city you might be moving to, learn more about the activities in your own, find a date, find housing, get a job, barter, and buy pretty much anything under the sun. While this in its own right is powerful, given that almost every aspect of importance in your life can be satisfied here, the real power comes from the ability to search and subscribe to feeds.

Let's say that you really want to join a hiking club or buy a used kitchen table. You could scour the individual posts in the groups and for sale sections daily, in hopes of finding what you are looking for, or you could do a search query to locate any current posts matching those keywords. If you don''t immediately find what you want, you can subscribe to an RSS feed that will inform you of any new posts matching those keywords. As advocated on the site Get Rich Slowly, the feeds can help you get exactly what you want, as long as you are willing to act quickly. Post author J.D. also lists several other useful tips for getting the most out of Craigslist.

While this post has now become something of a glowing review for Craigslist, it is also a reminder that while good design is nice, it's what's contained in the design that really matters. Good content is often the hardest aspect of a website to come up with and organize, and the ability to easily navigate and search is key if you don''t want users to quickly click away from your site and onto a competitor''s. You need to give your users a reason to return, and Craigslist excels in this regard.