

Ask HN: How would you beat Craigslist? - memtap

In terms of traffic, Craigslist is the overwhelming leader in online classifieds.  With over 60 million uniques a month, it vastly outsizes competitors Oodle (~4.9 million), Backpages(~3.8 million) and others.  Granted, this does not take competitors dedicated to one vertical(i.e. Monster.com for Jobs; Match.com for Personals) into account.<p>My question to you HN, is how would you compete with Craigslist to build a complete classifieds site? 
   - Jobs, For Sale, Personals, Housing, Services<p>How would you penetrate their first mover advantage and extreme market share?
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ig1
The list of services you give are somewhat ironic.

It's easy to forget that once upon a time Craigslist was the dominant player
in jobs, dating, housing, etc. but now all of those sectors are dominated by
niche players.

Craigslist is dying a death of a thousand cuts, niche companies have gone
after and in almost all cases taken the most profitable areas away from
craigslist leaving it with the low-margin dregs.

Craigslist originated in a time when web discovery was hard, with the rise of
sites like Google the discovery problem was solved and the advantage of
Craigslist severely reduced.

If you want to take on a particular vertical from Craigslist you can probably
figure out a way to do that vertical better, but if you try to build a generic
service you're building a solution to a problem that no-longer exists.

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christphrdunder
There's plenty you could do to make a better Craigslist, simply because
they're so slow to roll out any new features. As a result, there's a large
number of websites and mobile apps built to augment the basic functionality of
vanilla Craigslist.

But I highly doubt you could have any success grabbing market share, because
none of these functional shortcomings are enough of a problem to the Average
User that they'd be interested in using a service with no reputation. Not to
mention the network effect.

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memtap
Definitely agree that Craigslist could be a better site; but what about a
better business? It seems that most of the sites that have taken on Craigslist
have offered technical improvements; I.e. mobile apps and social integration.

What about non-technical innovation? What about an aggressive, real world
sales force that solicits businesses?

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polyfractal
Sales forces are very expensive. Case in point: Groupon has a lot of revenue,
but still does not turn a profit. That's because Groupon needs a giant sales
force to hunt down the deals.

CL is making a lot of money precisely because they are relatively lightweight.

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loupgaroublond
You're asking the wrong question. If someone could do it, they would have. Ask
yourself why hasn't Craigslist been cracked. What does Craigslist not serve
and how can you step through, via iterations, a product that's disruptive to
how classifieds are done today.

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mapster
You would need a significant technological breakthrough - so you would be 1st
mover of this, and apply it to a new breed of classifieds. Maybe AI or
something.

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xsmasher
Maps; I'd like to see a map of all apartments or tag sales in a specific area,
or a map of all the items I've selected.

~~~
memtap
Agreed, PadMapper.con does a really good job of this.

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notatoad
I wouldn't. The online classifieds market does not have any room for new
entrants.

~~~
memtap
There's always room for new entrants. What about Google overtaking Yahoo and
Facebook overtaking MySpace? In hindsight it's easy to point out flaws, but at
the time, each of the respective sites were their markets leader.

~~~
notatoad
there's a difference between a market leader and the market leader customers
are satisfied with. myspace was shit and everybody knew it. there was plenty
of room for a new entrant. same thing with yahoo. even with google, there is
still potentially room for new entrants in the search market because search is
such a complex problem and there are many ways of approaching it.

classifieds, however, is a very simple market, and craigslist does an
exceptional job of serving that market. you can't beat them on price or reach,
and there are no other important features. the only hope of success in selling
classifieds is to launch into geographical areas or languages they don't
serve. it's also a fairly low-margin market, and the primary customers are
cheapskates.

why would you attempt to enter a market like that when there are underserved,
lucrative markets to be exploited?

