

OLX: Craigslist + modern-looking UI - traffic - byrneseyeview
http://www.olx.com/

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mechanical_fish
Dozens of words trapped in tiny prison cells, struggling to be free. And a
design with so little character that it makes me worry that I've stumbled upon
a domain squatter.

No community features, like discussion forums. No Best-of-Craigslist. Perhaps
nobody cares enough about this bland site to craft such a thing?

Having said that, for all I know OLX would be crushing Craigslist if only the
rip-off/ripped-off relationship were reversed.

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kajecounterhack
Actually, I like it. I wanted to look at vehicles and it was far easier to
browse than craigslist, cause there are pictures right next to the thing like
ebay.

Though, yeah, its not as community oriented maybe?

Bookmarked.

~~~
mechanical_fish
_Actually, I like it. I wanted to look at vehicles and it was far easier to
browse than craigslist, cause there are pictures right next to the thing like
ebay._

Here we see the problem with a front-page design that screams "clone":
Visitors like me click away without learning about your site's unique new
features!

If they stuck a sample vehicle ad somewhere on the front page the site might
become much stickier. They'd at least look like they were trying.

Finding the room on the page without losing valuable links might be a problem,
though. Maybe if they took out all those framed boxes they might find room for
a thumbnail?

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bprater
One of the beautiful things about craigslist is that it is a holdover from the
early days of the web. It is a snapshot of what we all once were.

I hope they never give in to the temptation to redesign.

(And it doesn't hurt that it is blazing fast.)

~~~
mhb
And here's one of the hideous things.

Maybe I don't understand how to do this, but there seems to be no way to
search for something in all of, for example, Massachusetts instead of its
separate geographic regions.

If that's the way it is, it's ridiculous and if it's not obvious how to do a
broader search, that's also ridiculous.

~~~
akd
Craigslist deliberately forces you to interact within your local sphere. It
may suck if you're on the border of two of their regions, but it helps them
keep a local focus. They could easily implement nationwide search.

~~~
derefr
I'm surprised no one's built an app that just spiders the craigslist database
and allows you to query it in more interesting ways than the craigslist
developers could think of.

~~~
Shooter
There have been NUMEROUS apps that provide beefed-up searching (multi-
city,etc.) for CraigsList. Most get in trouble with CL because they're
violating CL's TOS.

Craig and Company want you on their site, not on an aggregation site that
sucks their listings...so they shut aggregators and scrapers down pretty
quickly. OLX is, if I recall correctly, one of the many companies that has
already gotten in trouble for doing this.

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pibefision
They received VC money (U$S 15 million).

So, we are on a bubble, or we are not seeing something.

~~~
furiouslol
they're pretty big outside of the US. So it's not exactly another ill-advised
VC funding

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subwindow
I had always thought that Craigslist was poorly designed, but I've changed my
mind. This site is, ostensibly, better designed. But I still had to look
around for about 15 seconds before I found what I was looking for.

The way that the Craiglist headings are designed is really great, actually.
With large headers you lose vertical separation, and this is especially
valuable in visualizing the "search | categories | cities" split.

The Craiglist design may not be a happy accident of bad web design. I think it
was done very carefully.

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aasarava
I have to laugh when I hear people say they could "build a better-looking
Craigslist" in "a few months" or "a few weeks" or "a weekend" [or insert your
own timeframe.] Craigslist isn't just some simple bulletin board software and
forums that Craig put up on the Web one night -- it's the result of _years_ of
steady growth, good customer service, good word-of-mouth, and just good
business. Sure, you could build a localized classified ads service that looks
"more modern" -- meaning it uses gradients for no good reason other than
everyone else is using them -- but that's no Craiglist.

Now, if you have a site that somehow gets past some major problem or
irritation that Craiglist users face, then maybe you've got a chance. But if
you're just putting a new coat of paint on an old, well-executed idea, I'm not
seeing the opportunity there.

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altay
The founder/CEO of this site is Fabrice Grinda
(<http://www.fabricegrinda.com/>), who was interviewed on Venture Voice a
while back
([http://www.venturevoice.com/2005/12/vv_show_21_fabrice_grind...](http://www.venturevoice.com/2005/12/vv_show_21_fabrice_grinda_of_z.html)).
His interview was one of my favorites.

He's got an interesting approach to entrepreneurship -- rather than coming up
with novel ideas, Fabrice takes ideas that work in one location and replicates
them somewhere else. First he built (and sold) the eBay of Latin America +
Europe, then he brought ringtones to America from Asia (!). After selling his
ringtone company for $80M, he founded OLX, to bring craigslist to other
countries.

Check out his interview; you'll learn a lot.

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briansmith
It looks like a domain squatter page. I was surprised there was no "This
domain may be for sale!" link.

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vaksel
the traffic problem is worse than you think, I believe they don't remove any
old listings. So you may see 80,000 items, but only a dozen were posted in the
last week

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terpua
Their model focuses on providing listings to other.

Ex: <http://olx.friendster.com/>

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kaiz49
( UI / Navigation of OLX ) < ( UI / Navigation of <http://www.adsglobe.com/> )

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compay
Holy layout tables batman! The UI looks like Craig's list with a little Web
2.0 gloss... not very modern to me.

