thanks for your thoughts. we'd like to have more gatherings/marketplace type stuff on the site but that takes a certain critical mass - people know that on craigslist their ad will be seen. our site is still trying to build traffic.

that's an interesting idea about trying to use facebook and then group by location. but are facebook apps really the ticket anymore? it seems to me that most facebook users are extremely hesitant to use apps anymore - especially apps that post content automatically to walls, etc. and since our site only collects an email address from each registered user, we just felt the integration wasn't worthwhile.