

Help Replenish Landlord Listings on PadMapper using PadLister - iamwil
http://blog.padmapper.com/2012/06/25/help-replenish-landlord-listings-on-padmapper/

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huckleberries21
It'll be interesting to see if crowd-sourcing can work for PadLister here.
CL's incumbency gives them a strong monopoly on the small independent
landlords and subletting.

Power of the social media vs. power of the network effect. Rooting for
PadMapper on this one.

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iamwil
There's probably a number of ways to do it. Not all listings are created
equal. If people get the impression there are better/cheaper/more unique
listings on padlister, then might be willing to go there.

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clarky07
the real problem is knowing to go there in the first place though. most people
have no idea that it exists.

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ThePherocity
Well, we do. I'm certainly going to spread the news. I like the spunk!

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ap22213
Will PadLister provide a free API for everyone to use?

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dclowd9901
Why should they? They never complained about Craigslists' right to theirs. Now
they can leverage their popularity into a disruptive counter-service.

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Chirael
I added a listing.

However I noticed it strongly encouraged the user to link to her/his Facebook
to "increase trust" for potential tenants.

I don't know if you've ever been a landlord before, but I absolutely do NOT
want my tenants to look at my Facebook or know where I live. That's why I have
my tenants mail their rent to a PO box.

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abentspoon
Someone should release a tool to scrape craigslist and post to padlister.
Wouldn't craigslist have to counter-scrape and file a DMCA takedown notice for
each listing?

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briandear
Sure. Let's build tools to steal other people's data and profit from it.

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huckleberries21
I guess I'm more sympathetic in this case because of the nature of the data:
they're classified listings. The dynamic there is that landlords actually want
lots of people to see their ad, and apartment hunters want to see as many good
options as possible. So in this case, CL is a portal for that, but has set its
policy to be such that it prevents the access both the landlords and the apt
hunters want.

Sure, CL is in its right as a for-profit company to not share info. But it's
not in the best interest of the people who post (i.e. the generators of that
data). It's frustrating that CL gets to tout itself as some uniquely
altruistic for-profit company that's not all about maximizing profit and more
focused on the good of its users, then refuses to give the posters more
exposure for the sake of keeping their monopoly. Then they automatically
assume that every other competitor out there is some greedy capitalist trying
to profit off the community, which it doesn't seem like PadMapper has done.
It's got a lot of users, but not much of a profit model, and it's been this
way for years.

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JWhiteaker
This is the logical move for padmapper. I wonder if the press they've been
getting will be enough to seed their user base to make it self-sustaining.

It would be ironic if Craigslist just helped create a viable competitor,
though this is unlikely.

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briandear
It won't make a dent. Getting landlords off of Craigslist is about as easy as
gettin South Korea off Internet Explorer.

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res0nat0r
From this tweet it sounds like Craigslist might be launching their own
improved housing search...

<http://twitter.com/craignewmark/status/217329959373504514>

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tgrass
By your reckoning, that tweet also suggests we are about to go war with
Bolivia.

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Chirael
Also, I might have a different person as the contact person for each
listing/property; the way it's set up now, it doesn't let you set name on a
per-listing basis, it automatically pulls it from the linked profile.

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ericd
Each person should have their own account, or if you set up a feed, you can
set different contact emails for each listing. Does that not match with how
you'd see yourself working with it?

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briandear
It's interesting how some in the hacker news community make such a big deal
about this issue but doesn't put as much effort into helping all startups
trying to build something useful. It seems like this issue has degraded into
something beyond Craigslist and their decisions and into a charity
solicitation for Padmapper. I wish my company got this kind of free marketing
support. I guess I ought to steal some data and then complain when the owner
pulls the plug. I am happy to read about the issue, but I am not happy that a
company attempts to use HN as a tool for their own benefit.

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ericd
Wow, nice string of comments in here. Did I offend you somehow? The outrage
isn't about "charity", it's about the millions of people that depend on this
service to find housing more easily on Craigslist. If you've ever used
PadMapper, you'd know that it wasn't co opting craigslist data, it was just
summarizing and linking to it.

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graue
Don't worry about it, Eric. I think a lot of HNers have found PadMapper
useful, support what you're doing and want it to be successful — hence, this
making the front page.

