
Ask YC: Why can't anyone compete with craigslist? - agotterer
I can't figure out why no one has become a serious threat to craigslist. No one has even made a dent in the craigslist market share. Why?
======
akd
Because nobody is willing to compete with a company that doesn't seem to want
to make money. What would you do better than Craigslist? It's not clear that
there is much (besides better search), and it's not clear that you could
monetize it when competing against a behemoth nonprofit.

~~~
shawndrost
"besides better search"

You say that like it's not a big deal. It's 8 am in Honolulu, one of the
smaller cl cities, and there are 200 cars posted today. There's no way to
search by year, blue book, mileage, etc, all of which are (generally) possible
with the existing data. I think craigslist could be much more useful.

The biggest thing holding them back is their uncharacteristic resistance to
mashups. I strongly believe they're working against their own aims (public
service) in shutting down services that scrape their data.

~~~
astrec
I just spent a better part of an hour typing out a response only to lose it.

To summarize:

Search is key. CL are a non-player in our market, but the CL equivalent cannot
compete with us in automotive.

Why? High quality reference data, the kind that means you can't add a 1999
Ford Pinto CL if no such thing exists, and if it did exist we know it came
with an iPod dock, is reasonably expensive to create and maintain and
generalist just don't have the focus.

High quality reference data leads to high quality search, where you search for
2007 Ford X and get only '07 Ford X' or you search for late model BMW's
between $25k and $33k and get exactly those, tends to deliver high quality
buyers. Search quality and lead quality are inextricably linked. Sellers tend
to follow high quality buyers.

I don't know how CL fares vertical for vertical, but I'd be quite surprised if
in most markets they were the #1 player in each vertical.

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tptacek
The network effect.

The most important feature of a classifieds site is cost to reach audience X.
At this point, it is probably impossible to compete with Craigslist on that
metric.

~~~
STHayden
yeah it's all network effect and branding. Kijiji has been having problems
finding a foot hold anywhere. Just the same way olx.com has got gotten big in
the USA but is big internationally.

<http://www.flugpo.com>

At flugpo we are building a craigslist competitor that has better everything.
But it's hard to get a large foothold anywhere with out being able to focus on
a market and work at it for a long time.

~~~
fbailey
srry not to be mean but you totally missed the market craigslist is actually
better than your site... we are working on a competitor but only in germany.

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aasarava
To beat Craigslist, you need to find something about Craiglist that can not
only be done better -- but that users actually want _more_ than Craigslist's
reach. Both those requirements need to be there for a competitor to have a
chance.

In other words, it's not sufficient enough to say, "Somebody could easily
build a better-looking Craiglist". Users aren't willing to post or browse
classifieds on a site that may look nicer by doesn't have the same reach.

Likewise, it's not sufficient to offer a site that has "modern" (Web 2.0)
tools. Again, that doesn't help users with their primary objective: getting
their ad in front of as many people as possible.

So does Craiglist even have an Achilles' Heel then? In my opinion, the one
thing that absolutely sucks about posting an ad to Craiglist is getting a ton
of flakey or illegible responses from people who are just wasting your time. I
don't bother to post small items there anymore because it's just not worth the
trouble. If someone could develop a site that filters out all the flakes, I
bet you'd have a compelling reason for people to start using it.

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ig1
I've analyzed this market quite a bit (as I've thought about creating a
startup in this area) and the best attack vector I identified was to
commodotize the platform.

Do to Craigslist what slinkset does to reddit. Go after a thousand niche
markets. Craigslist lets you suggest new locations but that's about it. But
there's no reason every small town/organization/hobby/school/company shouldn't
be able to have it's own classifieds website.

~~~
vaksel
didn't edgio try this?

~~~
nuggien
no.

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IsaacSchlueter
Whenever there is something free and useful, it's only a matter of time before
a not-quite-as-free and even-more-useful alternative comes along.

Craigslist is the ultimate "free and useful" site. But it does a lot.

Dating sites, in particular, outdo Craigslist for personals pretty routinely.
OKCupid and PlentyOfFish are almost as free (they have ads), but are much less
spammy. (CL's w4m boards are pretty much 100% spam. The others aren't much
better. Actually, I'm not sure why they even continue to keep them up.)

The last time I sold a car, and the last time I bought one, I did use CL
pretty aggressively, but the actual deal I ended up making was through
Autotrader both times.

So, it's possible to compete with Craigslist in specific areas, but it's a bit
foolish to try to be the "all forms of classified", since they do THAT pretty
damn well. They've stripped down the feature set to the point where it's just
what is necessary, and _nothing_ else. Not a bad strategy. (Arguably, the only
one that really works.)

The trick is to find something where CL is the best of breed, and figure out
the pain points. If the answer is "there aren't any pain points", then move on
to the next idea.

~~~
profgubler
I completely agree, you would have to attack it at it's weakness and then
build from there. I don't think you can just throw a bunch of money at a
better functioning site and get the users you need. Craigslist didn't get
where they are by trying to be in every city at once. They offer every
classified but they started one city at a time.

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qhoxie
The very grassroots way that CL gained popularlity is making it really
difficult to dislodge as the dominant figure in their market. Since people
were pulled in by word of mouth originally, and (generally) feel comfortable
with the site, it is going to take a significant perk to convince them to
move.

My thought is that it will happen in time if they don't adapt and modernize,
but they have a great hold right now.

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nolanbrown23
The only feasible way I see to compete against craigslist is to be local.
Start with one small city, get your bearings and understand the market there
and then move into a larger market one by one. I would recommend against SF
but Sacramento, Seattle, Houston, etc would all be good markets to launch a
full-scale local classifieds. I know several companies that are working on
this right now and they seem to be having some luck. It takes dedication to
the market to get a foot in the door and leverage to open it all the way.

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qw
In Norway there's a service called Finn (www.finn.no), that translates to
"Find"

They were backed by a large news corporation, so that probably helped. The
corporation really didn't want to look too much at classifieds on the
internet, since they had a paper business to protect. That's why they waited
until 2000 before the site was released.

When it comes to real estate, I think they have close to 100% of the market.
Only real estate agents are allowed to post ads, and I think they pay a lot to
do so.

They are also huge in the motor market. You have to pay 76 USD to add your
used car to the listing. There are numerous free alternatives, but people
still use Finn because it is _the_ place to go.

When free alternatives can't compete, what can?

But on the positive side, there's not a lot of spam :-)

Examples: <http://www.finn.no/finn/car/used/result?CAR_MAKE=749>

<http://www.finn.no/finn/realestate/homes/result?areaId=20061>

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fdschoeneman
I've looked through all the comments here and while most of the answers seem
to be along the critical mass variety/network effects/market reach, I think
the better answer is branding. Specifically, Craig Newmark has earned my
trust, and that of millions of others for no other reason than he's a pretty
good dude. If you're going to beat Craigslist -- Craig Newmark -- at Craig's
game, you're have to do things significantly better than they do. Not
marginally better, but significantly better. And certainly there are problems
with the level of spam in Craigslist, but those are solvable problems, given
enough time. And the problem with Kijiji, which may have a better technical
solution, is that it's run by Ebay, which once had my trust, but has since
lost it.

Frankly, I wouldn't buy a ham sandwich from Meg Whitman.

As an aside, I'm listening outside my window right now, and am overhearing a
couple of busboys at the nextdoor restaurant speaking in Spanish about how to
find rooms for rent on Craigslist.

\-- Fred

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kehunt
Having spent a year trying to compete with Craigslist (albeit entirely on my
own), I can say it's a damn hard market to break into. You're competing with
free. Your market by definition scrimping on money. You're competing against a
very well-known brand name.

I'd love it if my little hobby project (<http://dibs.net>) managed to take
off, even a little bit. It'd be dead-simple to write apps against the API. I'd
encourage it! IMHO, Dibs is what CL would be if it weren't built a decade ago.

~~~
slater
one problem right off the bat with dibs.net is that, as with seemingly 100% of
US-based sites relying on geo-location information, it fails horribly outside
of the (US-based) developer's market: I'm currently in Lucerne, central
Switzerland, yet it put me in Emmen, a sleepy suburb north of Lucerne.

Edit: A quick re-test with the google map thingy shows me that dibs.net
doesn't even want to know about Lucerne, and instead is fixated on suburbs and
villages around Lucerne :(

My advice: Until there's some magical geolocation service that works 100% all
of the time, don't offer it. I know I can change it on your site, but many
many many people won't be doing that.

~~~
kehunt
Thanks for the feedback slater. It's true that geolocation data is probably
less accurate outside the US. And since I'm on a budget I use only free
services (the paid data sources would have more accuracy). I might be missing
your point, though. Emmen is only 4.4km from Lucerne, so the map search area
is nearly identical. Is your issue that it says "Emmen" at the top?

~~~
slater
You said it: Nearly identical. But in Europe, and more so in Switzerland where
distances aren't so vast as in the US, 4.4km is "far away". Sounds silly, but
it's true.

As for "my issue", it's the fact that I'm in more or less dead-central
Lucerne, yet I can't for the life of me get the google maps widget to interact
with your geolocation script to show "Lucerne". It gives me "Within 0 miles
of" and then a list of suburbs and villages just outside of Lucerne: Emmen
(4km away), Horw (about the same distance), Kriens (just outside of Lucerne),
and Weggis, which is about 20km further down and on the other side of the
lake! :D

------
handelaar
As others have said, Craigslist has an enormous audience which is a self-
reinforcing factor.

It also has a practically-unimpeachable reputation as a company which doesn't
seem to have much interest in making as much money as it can - only as much as
it needs to make.

It does have a number of weaknesses, though. Certain areas are gigantic,
useless spam traps. Some territories (the UK springs to mind) are full of
basically nothing. Some other territories (like Ireland) are almost entirely
uncovered. And a spam-controlled free version of those parts CL is charging
for would have a chance at competitiveness.

Nobody's "become a serious threat" to CL because nobody as yet is trying to
hit those soft areas while also providing the other services you can get at
CL.

Making "a dent in the CL market share" is probably the wrong metric to pay
attention to, though - a number of CL-alikes have significant traffic outside
the US where CL basically sucks at the moment and has no market share to lose.
A quick comparison of Gumtree.com in London versus its CL equivalent shows
that it's not Craigslist in pole position.

Again, on localisation of content: CL contains an awful lot of material of no
direct relevance to the city you're supposed to be looking at, and all its
discussion areas are US-only but propagated worldwide anyway.

I get the strong feeling that on top of all this, CL reinforces its innocuous-
little-guy image with its almost wilfully unstyled UI. I doubt that a slick
WebTwenny design would help any competitor.

------
rcoder
Network effects are huge, and especially tough to overcome when the price of
listings on Craigslist is so low, but I think there's another effect at work:
namely, their minimalism actually makes the site _more_ useful for their users
than a more structured listing model would be.

By storing only very minimal posting metadata, and eschewing an API that would
allow mash-ups and alternate browsing interfaces, Craigslist offers the same
(often overlooked) advantage that old-school classified ads do: namely, they
more or less force people to read a lot of the ads in order to have any chance
of finding something.

That's better for sellers, because it increases the chances their ad will be
seen, and in many cases it benefits buyers, too, since they may stumble across
ads that would never have shown up in a more sophisticated search result set.

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pseingatl
It odd that no one has commented on all the problems Craigslist has been
having. It is inundated with spam. Some categories in some cities have been
rendered useless. Take a look at the Craigslist complaint boards. People are
abandoning Craigslist in droves. Craigslist today is not what it was three or
five years ago. Replicate the Craiglist of three years ago, address spam and
similar issues: therein lies the way to make a dent in their market share.

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bradleyjoyce
I think it's all about craigslist's ease of use. there is no 'required'
information that you have to input. Take cars for example.. you don't have to
spend 20 mins filling out a huge form that contains a bunch of [possibly]
superfluous information. you just post whatever you want to post and that's
it.

try to make anything "better" than craigslist almost requires that you force
people to provide more information and make it less likely for them to use
your service

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prism4tx
Its just one of those things where you don't really try to threaten CL, you
just do what you can to have fun with your online classifieds and hope for
success. Our site. <http://.www.AddAnything.com> is a perfect example of
keeping things simple. If it happens, it happens, if not, just sit back and
enjoy the ride :)

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BenS
I think kijiji is on its way to getting a foothold in the free classifieds
market.

In response to your question , I think it's hard because the value of
craigslist is in the breadth of it's listings and readers, not in any
technical feature. I think a competitor will likely have to take advantage of
an already captive audience. I thought facebook marketplace had a great shot,
but it didn't seem like they focused on it much.

------
kqr2
The value of craigslist is in its community which creates a very useful
network for selling things, finding an apartment, etc. It's active community
also helps police it by removing spam, thus maintaining a relatively good
signal to noise ratio. So, unless you are able to create a critical mass
elsewhere, it will be hard to dislodge.

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aneesh
It's not just about how good the site is, or what features they have. There
are _huge_ network effects. If you're a buyer, you want to go where there are
a lot of sellers. And vice versa. And Craigslist has that.

If anyone wants to become a serious threat to craigslist, there is a huge
chicken-and-egg problem to overcome.

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rsheridan6
What if you had a service that stole craigslist's data, but had a better
interface and better search? You would then have a superset of Craigslist's
data, but with a better experience. It would probably be illegal, but you
could host it in Lower Elbonia where you wouldn't get prosecuted, like
Mygazines.

~~~
vaksel
there are plenty of sites that do just that, none of them gain any real
traction.

------
parenthesis
Gumtree is more popular in the UK. (It was bought a three years ago by ebay.)

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fbailey
Mostly because people are focused on the wrong things, we are working on a
german classified site, we might be looking for a US Team in some months.
Preferred location San Francisco :-) that would be fun.

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mechanical_fish
What's wrong with Craigslist that makes it worth the loss of network effect,
or the cost of looking at irrelevant ads, or - best of all - worth cash money
to fix?

I don't have an answer. Until someone comes up with one...

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theashworld
1\. It works 2\. It is cheap (mostly free)

This is the same reason why it's hard to beat google, ebay, etc.

Things change when the company which owns a market leading product makes a
mistake - case in point: Microsoft Windows Vista.

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TCL15
For the same reason no one will be able to beat wikipedia. It's a LOVED
company. People will flock to craigslist till it turns on it's users. Case in
point ebay.

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slater
A better design for Craigslist has already been done here:
<http://craigslist.thebignoob.com/>

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tom_rath
I'm finding that ebay's Kijiji is providing a good alternative (though its
name is annoyingly difficult to remember or relate to others in speech).

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mixmax
Metcalfe's law states that the value of a network is proportional to the
square of the number of users of the system (n²)

And craigslist has a lot of users...

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donna
How about a widget for the iPhone? Upgrade Craigslist by using the iPhone that
pulls listings, receive the classified and call directly.

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dentonbros
I have the ultimate Craiglist killer idea. Really do. If you are a hacker of
considerable intellect, contact me.

------
dentonbros
I have the ultimate Craiglist killer idea. Really do. If you are a hacker of
considerable intellect, contact me.

------
froo
In a word? Branding.

It's the same reason you find Google & Ebay continue to dominate their
respective markets.

~~~
mpc
Really? Google doesn't solve any hard problems?

~~~
froo
Well when we're talking about search - both the Yahoo and Live engines have
effectively caught up in providing relevant results when searching, yet Google
still has a dominating position which is still growing.

That right there is a result of branding.

It's the same reason why Coke dominates the soda market, if someone walks into
a store to get a drink of some form, the chance that they will get a Coke is
high - when any of the drinks will essentially do the same job.

To add some perspective I'll give a recent personal experience, which isn't
conclusive by any stretch but illustrates my point easily enough.

I have an Uncle who approached me last week asking for advice about buying his
first computer because he wanted to get onto the Internet so that he could
search for Surfing stuff (his hobby) and also use Ebay. He's never used the
net before, but already has a good idea of what Ebay is, and can name sites
like Google (but not yahoo interestingly enough).

