

Ask YC: Anyone working on applications for Craigslist? - breck

Today I stumbled upon a great program that makes reading craigslist easier. It's called Craigslist Reader and is available here:<p>http://www.motiont.com/<p>(My review is here: http://breckyunits.com/?p=52)<p>A lot of Web 2.0 apps piggyback on the big sites to achieve success (Auctomattic, Facebook apps, etc.). I think this is a terrific strategy because these sites have millions of daily users who have many unmet wants. I was wondering if anyone here has been working on (or know of any) apps that would benefit craigslist users.<p>I'm not planning on developing any, actually I'm just curious because I use craigslist a fair amount.
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gscott
Craigslist doesn't have an open system. Craigslist blocks ip's of those
accessing there system through a web application and they send out lots of
cease and desist notices. It just is not worth the time to develop something
that might even benefit Craigslist.

Piggybacking on bigger sites is a good idea, just find one that is interested.
Paypal did for eBay and it worked out for them, There is a lot of room to
develop things using ebay. For example, maybe a craigslist format but for ebay
auctions.

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aaronsw
That's a pretty serious claim; any pointers? If you've got some I'll be sure
to nag Craig about it next time I see him.

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fragmede
listpic?

<http://mashable.com/2007/06/08/listpic-craigslist/>

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aaronsw
So the issue is: 1) they were putting ads on top of Craigslist, and 2) they
were using up too much bandwidth. I expect if you actually wanted to build
something useful you could just email Craig and he'd get you a dump.

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gscott
There have been a few others, one fellow made a search system (using the rss
feeds) where you can search across cities (by using checkboxes to select the
different areas). Craiglist didn't like that.

I guess the bigger question is, what would Craigslist like? I am not sure, I
just have not seen anything survive yet because Craigslist hasn't liked
anything anyone has done so far.

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STHayden
I'm in a startup working on a competitor to craigslist. We have a long way to
go but so far I think we have good bones. We are hoping to work toward being
more open for people to build on top of us.

<http://www.flugpo.com>

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dcurtis
Can you explain why you're creating a craigslist competitor? I'm having a hard
time understanding why so many people are doing this.

What problem are you solving?

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jrockway
I got my first two apartments on Craigslist, both a few years ago. I was
looking for a new one this year on Craigslist, but the rentals section is so
full of lies and "call me for info" that it's worthless.

Basically, the openness of Craigslist is destroying it. I'm not sure how to
solve the problem, but I would really like a forum that is non-commercial.

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cmm324
Our goal for our startup <http://www.propertystampede.com> is to captures the
dynamic listings that craigslist does for rental property, but in a fraud free
environment.

Come check us out, and if you have rental property or are a property manager,
please sign up for the beta.

Christopher Mancini Co-Founder, Property Stampede LLC

~~~
cmm324
Why the downmode? Our product is indirectly creating an environment for
property managers to list individual units, and because of the design of the
system, you have to be using our property management software to list on our
listing engine. Reducing possible fraud if not eliminating it all together.

Our listing engine will not provide the same listings you see in forrent.com,
rent.com and apartments.com, which is primarily apartment complexes. Our goal
is to provide a wide variety of rental listings more similar to craigslist.
Listings that normally would not find themselves on the above mentioned sites
due to the magnitude of cost that is required to list there.

For this I get downmoded :(

Sincerely, Christopher Mancini

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kirse
<http://www.crazedlist.org> \-- Lets you search states, regions, etc. on
Craiglist. You have to disable referrers though, which takes about 2 seconds.
I didn't make the site nor do I know the guy behind it, but I found it pretty
useful when searching for a car.

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redorb
(not a product but a personal idea) ...

I wanted to build a google custom search engine, that indexes all the car
sites (for each city etc..) - then make them all search-able from one box...
This works for all items that someone would drive cross state for...

\- I was afraid this might be used for malicious purpose so I haven't done it
yet

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joshwa
yep, flowthing (coming soon, needs a new name) will piggyback on craigslist,
as well as its competitors in the jobs and real estate markets.

