Missed connection
personal advertisement seeking reunion after initial contact in passing
A missed connection is a type of personal advertisement which arises after two people meet but are too shy or otherwise unable to exchange contact details. The "Missed Connections" section of Craigslist gets thousands of ads of this type every month in New York City, San Francisco, and Seattle.
The feature was started by Jim Buckmaster, Craigslist's CEO, after he noticed a common type of posting in their personal ads, which he characterized as "you-smiled-at-me-on-the-subway-platform". He sees the format as addressing a common human need and being ideal for romantic comedy, "Missed Connections give people that second chance...They represent persistence in the face of long odds, which definitely adds to their artistic appeal." A variety of such artistic works have been developed including illustrations, movies, plays, poetry and songs.
Other major cities have similar columns in Craigslist and their own local media. London's Metro newspaper has a "Rush-hour Crush" column for commuters who exchange glances but nothing more. Many connections are re-established and couples have become married in this way, such as "tall rugby player" and "beautiful lady in the red dress with long brown curly hair". Various websites like Gumtree also offer the possibility of reconnecting with missed connections.
Distribution
The nature and location of missed connections have been analyzed. Across the United States in 2013, the breakdown by gender was:
59% Man seeking woman
27% Man seeking man
13% Woman seeking man
1% Woman seeking woman
In the Pacific Northwest, the most common location was public transportation.
The public source identifies “Missed connection” as personal advertisement seeking reunion after initial contact in passing. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Missed, connection and personal.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6878220. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2013.
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This entry incorporates text from “Missed connection” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.