
Is Craigslist rotting on the vine? - kennyroo
http://roundabout101.blogspot.com/2009/01/is-craigslist-rotting-on-vine.html
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teuobk
It's remarkable what users will "put up with" when their core needs are being
met. I don't like a lot of things about CL, but does it meet my core needs?
Yes; I can reach an enormous number of people with a high rate of success.

It seems to me that CL is a great example of the 80/20 rule -- but unlike most
other firms, they simply didn't bother to implement the other 80% of the
features.

~~~
Tichy
Still, why do those sites get so complacent? Seems to be the same with Twitter
- maybe I am the only one using it via web, but they don't even have a tinyurl
button or a search function for one's followers. What are they doing with
their time?

~~~
justindz
I get the impression from a lot of the coverage lately that they've been
working on an actual plan to make money. I'm speculating, but this could
involve developers working on features or even an alternate platform conducive
to that effort that wouldn't show up in the currently public-facing free
system.

I saw something similar with Heroku. In fact, in the RubyConf talk, Adam
Wiggins pretty much stated that they were asked by their investors to switch
gears to the making money part of things. Thus, the Heroku service stayed more
or less the same (and good, I might add) for a period of time up until this
recent announcement that other stuff had been happening behind the scenes.

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mdasen
I know PG posted that YC would like to fund a Craigslist competitor. The issue
is that it's hard to build the number of people needed to reach a critical
mass. Likewise, it's not that eBay is so great, it's just the only place with
that many people.

The CL search is really simple - really just whole word matches. That makes it
hard to search for things that haven't been adopted by the CL community as
keywords for items. I'm guessing this might be related to the amount of
hardware they run. While search isn't that taxing a thing to do, it isn't
necessarily easy (especially on CL's budget which doesn't rake in dough from
VC or ads).

Think about comparing it to something like Digg. CL has more traffic
([http://siteanalytics.compete.com/craigslist.org+digg.com/?me...](http://siteanalytics.compete.com/craigslist.org+digg.com/?metric=uv)
\- go to visitors->visits monthly and engagement->pages per visit). About 3.5
times the number of visits and about 10 times the number of pages per visit.
So, CL is getting 35 times the amount of traffic of a major site like Digg.
It's hard to scale up to 17.5 billion page views per month (24M per hour,
6,800 per second) - especially when you're not monetizing most of that.
Comparatively, Digg is getting a mere 200 page views per second.

I'd love to see improvements to CL, but I feel like some of them would
definitely require more hardware. CL wants to be independent with as little
commercialness as possible. In the end, that leaves CL what it is - a bastion
of whatever goes where it's also hard to find things.

~~~
joe_the_user
Craigs is simple enough that most of its users can feel like they understand
everything about it. Despite its being huge in users and content, this makes
it feel small.

If a user feels like they understands a site, they don't mind spending time on
it finding things. It is the opaque, confusing sites that have people run away
after a few searches. The challenge for any competitor is finding a way to
expand functionality while allowing the user to still feel like they
understand exactly how everything works.

~~~
joe_the_user
I would love to create a craigslist competitor. An improvement on craigslist
would be a site which allowed the user to search for item, price, location,
and time together - "yoga classes on Wednesdays in Berkeley for under $100" or
"garage sales Saturday with car parts" etc. What, where, when, and how-much
could be specified separately and orthogonally.

Remember, getting calendaring, location, price and category to work together
is a tough problem. Also, making sure postings remain fresh is tough if you do
anything other than craigslist's system of making everyone repost their
content every two weeks. And you would have to be willing not to monetize any
more than craigslist, 'cause the users can tell.

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joshwa
Hopefully Jeremy Zawodny will drop in here and give an answer, since he left
Yahoo and is working on mysql stuff for Craigslist now (including search, I
believe).

See also: <http://crazedlist.org/>

~~~
jzawodn
I've actually built a feature that addresses one of the concerns in the linked
article... now I just need to do the last 5% to ship it, I guess.

No, I'm not kidding.

But, yeah, we have a TODO list a mile long at craiglist. A lot of time goes
into keeping up with growth and those who want to do Bad Things. But we also
hack on new features too. We all _use_ craigslist in addition to working
there.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Damn, I love HN.

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Jasber
The double edged sword of Craigslist is that they accept nearly everything.
They're good enough for most people, which is why they'll continue to
dominate.

However there are many vertical niches within classifieds that can still
compete with Craigslist. Apartments, Houses, Cars, Crafts and Jobs have all
split out into separate niches and seem to be doing well. There are still tons
of smaller markets virtually untapped (Pets come to mind).

~~~
andrewljohnson
In the Bay area, a couple of those things you list are dominated by
Craigslist... apartments, cars.

If CraigsList had an API, it would be a game-changer. Then it would dominate a
lot more niches.

~~~
eznet
"If CraigsList had an API, it would be a game-changer."

Agreed. As a long time CL user, I have thought the exact same thing. Short of
API functionality and extensibility, I know of numerous scraper/mashup
applications that utilize CL data. Unfortunately, this does fall far short of
API extensibility and likely leads to liability in concerns to "stealing" CL's
data - I would be apprehensive about investing 'too much' on any project that
relies on scraping as chances are that the project will be killed by CL before
reaching the critical user mass of "success".

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tocomment
Here's my attempt: <http://www.gigbayes.com> at a better Craigslist search
FWIW.

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rm999
Craigslist is like a social network site - its users and brand name are its
sole asset. The actual design of the site isn't ideal, but it's enough to keep
the masses happy, and that's what matters. A single competent competitor could
take it down (like facebook did to myspace), but it would require a compelling
reason to use it, not just better design.

My main complaint about CL is the lack of user profiles. On ebay, I can (sort
of) use the user profile and ratings to gauge risk. This is especially
important on something like CL, where you actually meet face-to-face with a
person, not just get a product shipped to your address. I have had some
sketchy experiences on CL...

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AndrewWarner
The newspaper industry needs to stop complaining about Craigslist and realize
that there's a market need for a better product. Craigslist is a good site,
but it's full of scams + the search results are a mess + it's too anonymous.

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brandnewlow
What about just creating a "Search CL" type site with a killer search. Become
the new way to get into it, rather than their own home page.

~~~
euroclydon
That would violate their terms of use, and they would shut you down.

~~~
rms
They have given some sites permission, such as <http://housingmaps.com>, as
long as no ads are run.

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jwesley
Personally, I've had to start searching Craigslist posts with Google in order
to find listings I'd visited recently. They should just outsource their
internal search to Google, and if they feel like making many millions of
dollars, run Adwords ads along the search results.

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stcredzero
Is it that Craigslist is rotting, or is it that people's expectations of
search have moved forwards? How much would it cost to license search from
Google? Would Google provide it for free? Are enough people scared of Google
now that it would be a PR lose?

~~~
mds
Google Search Appliance? <http://www.google.com/enterprise/gsa> We have a
couple of those where I work - they seem ok. Way better than the search
function that came with our stupidly expensive "Enterprise Portal".

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awt
Here is my attempt to give Craigslist the features it badly needs (keeping
track of which ads emails come from, keeping track of ads):
<http://listingninja.com>

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rms
If Craigslist wants to do so much good for the world, why don't they monetize
it more and donate the money to Kiva or their own foundation?

~~~
diN0bot
The problem with this approach is that it substitutes good somewhere else for
badness here and now. I _like_ craigslist. I like the honesty, the local-ness
and the community. It is useful to me. I have never encountered scammers or
slimers like on ebay. I've found real people I can related to. Running
partners, indoor soccer teams, tennis rackets. They _are_ doing good for the
world, and they're doing it directly and sincerely. They can do it better--I
like many of the features listed here that they lack--or a competitor will.
But I hope they or the competitor retain the sincerity that is a unique gem in
today's corpate world.

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zacharydanger
I just found my new job on CL.

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kajecounterhack
<http://www.internshipin.com> < Startup by 18 year old Jessica Mah

