Thomas Dart, the Illinois sheriff who took on Craigslist, has lost his legal battle with the online classifieds site. But he vows not to give up.

“It wasn’t a publicity stunt,” said Dart of the suit he filed in March to shut down the “erotic services” section of Craigslist, which he said catered to prostitution. “After two and a half years of contacting them with no response, I had no option left but to sue them,” he said,

Earlier this week, a Federal District Court Judge dismissed the suit. Judge John F. Grady ruled that the site couldn’t be held accountable for how people used it, because it is protected by the Communications Decency Act. Wrote the judge: “Intermediaries are not culpable for ‘aiding and abetting’ their customers who misuse their service to commit unlawful acts.”

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The cover story for the September 2009 issue of Wired takes a look at the current state of Craigslist and the challenges it faces as it continues to evolve. In a sidebar, the magazine’s amazing art director Scott Dadich invited several designers to re-imagine and redesign Craigslist itself.

In addition to inviting contributions from SimpleScott, who was the former design director at BarackObama.com, Matt Wiley of Studio8 Design, and Luke Hayman and Lisa Strausfeld of Pentagram, Scott was kind enough to ask me for my take as well, and I leapt at the chance. I conscripted two colleagues from my design team at NYTimes.com to help me: Anh Dang who provided an invaluable sounding board for the information architecture and interaction design, and Paul Lau, who helped turn around the visual design literally over a weekend. You’ll see the mock-ups we submitted on page 104 of the magazine or, here at this link.

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The Internet’s great promise is to make the world’s information universally accessible and useful. So how come when you arrive at the most popular dating site in the US you find a stream of anonymous come-ons intermixed with insults, ads for prostitutes, naked pictures, and obvious scams?

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Gentlemen of Philadelphia, don’t let this great girl pass you by.

No, those aren’t my words. Well, not the last seven. These are the words of Britney, who is advertising in the new adult services section on Craigslist.

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Humanity knows no depths.

On Monday, Craigslist and other sites were adorned with many of those lucky to have won tickets to Tuesday’s Michael Jackson memorial service celebrating their good fortune–by trying to sell the free tickets.

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Startup executives and employees haven’t had it easy cashing out of their private company stock since the IPO and M&A markets, which typically provide “liquidity” and a route to riches, have been relatively moribund in recent years. Spotting an opportunity, several companies have sprung up in recent months to try and provide startups with new avenues to liquidity.

Next week, another of these companies, SharesPost, plans to announce their new service, say people briefed on the matter. The Los Angeles-area based company, headed by CEO Greg Brogger, will unveil an online platform where people can list their private company shares for sale and get bids for the stock.

SharesPost is positioned as a kind of Craigslist for private company stock, connecting sellers and buyers in an online classified ads-like model, say people briefed on the matter.

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If you’ve read anything about how companies are harnessing Twitter, chances are Frank Eliason, under the name “comcastcares,” has been mentioned.

He calls himself as “a simple customer-service guy” (not unlike Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, who goes by “customer-service representative”) and said at yesterday’s Federated Media conference that his team fields several hundred tweets a day. He receives about 200 private messages a day through the microblogging service, a mix of customer-service issues, spam and feedback on other Comcast Twitterers.

Mr. Eliason has only been with Comcast (CMCSA) for a year and a half, originally managing a small customer-service group at the cable provider’s Philadelphia headquarters. His team tiptoed into social media by contacting bloggers (by phone) who complained about service problems, but watched Twitter for about two months before doing outreach there.

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According to Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, writing reviews and rating services online is becoming a civic act not unlike traditional forms of public service.

Posting information about products and experiences as everyday as hotel stays (”Generally all my reports are shower-related,” he said) helps other people make more educated purchases, he said during a panel session Tuesday, and can ultimately lead to better customer service when large numbers of people weigh in on social-media forums.

“The only way these sites are going to work is if people start participating in the millions and tens of millions,” Mr. Newmark said. “Participating in these sites is an act of compassion, in some sense patriotism.”

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Dear South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster,

Two days ago you accused craigslist, and me personally, of engaging in criminal acts, reiterating your previous threat to file unwarranted and unconstitutional charges against us that are clearly barred by federal law. As you put it, “We have no alternative but to move forward with criminal investigation and potential prosecution.”

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The battle over adult ads on Craigslist is escalating–at least in South Carolina.

On May 5, the Palmetto State’s Attorney General Henry McMaster threatened to prosecute executives from the online classifieds site, if ads on the site play a role in a prostitution case in South Carolina.

Then last week, Craigslist announced steps to introduce a new review system for every single adult services listing on the site. It did this after consulting with the attorneys general from several states, who complained the site had become a preferred way for prostitutes to advertise their services.

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Give the SEC credit: they know how to write a press release.

Yesterday, the commission announced that it had charged two New Jersey men with a scheme involving the sale of so-called “prime certificates of participation,” which were supposed to be invested in various fixed income instruments, but in fact were pocketed by the sellers and used to help run their payroll services company and a charter aviation firm.

More specifically, the SEC alleges that Paul G. Bultmeyer and Arthur J. Piacentini advertised the instruments in print publications, as well as on Craigslist and other Internet sites. The men operated as Sherbourne Capital Management (here’s a cached version of their Web site, courtesy of Google) (GOOG) and Sherbourne Financial (here’s the cached site while it lasts.)

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Law-enforcement officers have long criticized Craigslist for not doing enough to prevent illegal activity among its users. The popular classified-ad Web site went on the defensive again last month after a 22-year-old medical student was charged with murdering a woman who advertised massage services on Craigslist.

The 14-year-old company says it wants to work with public officials to improve the site. It took a step on Tuesday by meeting with the attorneys general of Connecticut, Illinois and Missouri. Some have called on Craigslist to shut down its “erotic services” section, which they say facilitates prostitution.

In a blog post, Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster called the meetings, which were held in New York City, “cordial and productive.”

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Reporters looking into the case of a serial killer in the Northeast have hit upon what they consider a cool angle–he’s the Craigslist killer.

As though the victims of the Green River killer should have just avoided water.

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A 20-year-old Minnesota man who killed a woman he lured to his home with a fake Craigslist ad was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole yesterday.

According to news reports, in October 2007, the victim, Katherine Olson, 24 years old, responded to a help-wanted ad for a babysitter. She arrived to find Michael Anderson, who shot her in the back as she tried to leave. She was found in the trunk of her own car.

The prosecutor said that Mr. Anderson called himself “the Craigslist murderer” in conversations with other inmates.

Mr. Anderson pleaded innocent but was convicted on all counts, including first-degree murder. His attorney, Alan Margoles, argued that the shooting was accidental. He said he plans to appeal because he wasn’t allowed to use Mr. Anderson’s Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism, as evidence in the case.

The conviction follows the late March killing of George Weber, a New York journalist whose attacker told police that they met through a Craigslist personal ad.

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The evidence continues to mount: Craig Newmark is killing the newspaper industry.

According to new data from Hitwise, traffic to online classified advertising sites increased 84 percent in February from a year ago. The sector has seen positive growth in all but one month over the last three years. And while hardly the only player in the game, the single biggest beneficiary of the trend is Craigslist. According to Hitwise, of the top 100 classified ad Web sites, all but 3 were localized versions of Craigslist.

And the company’s domination is growing: a year ago, 12 of the top 100 were not related to Craigslist.

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