
Airbnb leverages Craigslist in a really cool way - rishi
http://www.gettingmoreawesome.com/2010/11/airbnb-leverages-craigslist-in-really.html
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patio11
Implementation details aside, this is a fantastic use of metrics in two ways:
it exposes them to the user in a way calculated to improve their experience,
_and_ it provides hard data that this feature is printing money hats. It also
establishes a baseline for further improvement (I would be tempted to pull a
Zynga and show the user a progress bar at 95% saying that they are almost done
and the one little thing they can do to complete their listing is to make with
the clickyclicky.)

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alnayyir
"make with the clickyclicky"

Most delightful phrase I've read in weeks, thanks for the chuckle. :)

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jwu711
Craigslist allows posting through it's api for housing things, guessing that's
how airbnb does it.

If you've ever used thumbtack, a marketplace for services, they have an auto
post to craigslist as well that is pretty interesting.

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yosho
Any idea how Airbnb actually implements the craigslist posting?

Yes it's auto submission, but with craigslist's new security measures and
login requirements, that looks really hard to do purely from a URL standpoint.
I'm almost wondering if there is some private API they are using or if they
have some sort of partnership going on.

Any ideas?

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slouch
auto submission is a myth. someone is typing in the captcha, whether that be
the end user, airbnb, or someone else.

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ig1
I would imagine they're using the Craiglist Bulk Posting API:

<http://www.craigslist.org/about/bulk_posting_interface>

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gmichnikov
Right now it seems AirBNB posts appear on CL as either "sublets and temporary"
or "vacation rentals."
([http://newyork.craigslist.org/search/hhh?query=airbnb&sr...](http://newyork.craigslist.org/search/hhh?query=airbnb&srchType=A&minAsk=&maxAsk=&bedrooms=))

The page linked above states that "sublets & temporary" is one of the
"categories for which bulk posting is no longer supported." Vacation rentals
is not one of these though.

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rhizome
There's not enough detail and investigation in the article, but this appears
to qualify as a third-party posting service, which is a no-no in
Craigslistland. I don't see any other way they could offer one-click posting
where the airbnb client didn't already have a Craiglist account (and not even
then, either). If this is indeed what is happening, Airbnb should tread
lightly lest they get the banhammer, and this is doubly true if the resulting
Craiglist ads appear to be Airbnb ads, and/or the ads are posted out-of-area.

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c1utch
It auto fills in the data for the user, and the user manually submits the
Craigslist listing. Nothing illegal with that...

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ericd
From a cursory look I did on this a while back, I believe it does the initial
submission for you, and then redirects you to the confirmation URL. Could be
wrong, but if that's correct, it's probably going to look to Craigslist like a
single server is doing a lot of auto-submissions...

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jim_h
I think they just construct the url for the Airbnb member and fill in all the
details. (Just a guess. Not on Airbnb.) The user would have to be the one to
click the confirm.

For example, <https://post.craigslist.org/nyc/H/sub/brk> is the first step in
creating a posting for temp place in Brooklyn. I assume they have a way of
defaulting the other form values.

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zach
Wow, did you see the field names on that form? They're encoded as long
alphanumeric strings. Never come across that before. Looks like they're pretty
feisty about people using their forms.

I guess this also explains why they set no-cache and no-store pragmas on their
posting pages, which caused me to lose a lengthy post when I accidentally
dragged something into the browser window. Jerks.

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alexsherrick
I really don't understand why everyone thinks Craigslist will have a problem
with this. They do not profit off of Housing/Sublet submissions. This will
only increase traffic to their site, and some users that aren't too familiar
with Craigs will possibly use the site for something Craigslist does make
money (e.g. jobs).

