

The Craigslist Credo: Unbrand, Demonetize, Uncompete - edw519
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/08/craigslist-credo-unbrand

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kitcar
Classified businesses, much like auctions, are a game of network size. Get big
first, you win, even if you have an inferior product.

In Canada, Craigslist took a little longer to catch on. Ebay noticed this, and
therefore "picked up the pace" by spending TONS of money acquiring Kijiji
visitors (mostly via SEM, but some display on major portals as well).

End result? Kijiji is #1 in Canada, and Craigslist is trending down in traffic
-
[http://trends.google.com/websites?q=craigslist.org%2C+kijiji...](http://trends.google.com/websites?q=craigslist.org%2C+kijiji.ca&geo=CA&date=all&sort=0)

Long story short - if your business model depends on network effects, raise
enough money to get big fast, as your basically racing to reach, not competing
on product.

~~~
bkovitz
Great observation. The article never mentions anything about "first mover" or
"network effect". It seems completely bought into the fallacy that intrinsic
product quality is what determines the winner in a market.

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mustpax
I for one absolutely admire Craigslist’s non-branded, not-for-profit
mentality. Regardless of its primitiveness, Craigslist serves its purpose
exceptionally well. Apparently, not all companies need profits to keep them
focused.

eBay can’t seem to provide a decent customer experience to save its life
regardless of how much it charges for listings. Instead of improving their
product, best strategy they can come up with is to buy a minority share in
craigslist so that they can strongarm the company.

It is also very telling that people (especially the newspapers) think
Craigslist has a duty to not undercut their outdated classifieds by not being
free. You know they are really reaching for somebody to blame.

~~~
mahmud
Can't they create an API and give developers metered access to their system? A
thousand better websites will mushroom overnight with no loss in revenue for
them. They can even require the third party site not accept signups or store
any data.

~~~
idlewords
In my experience, offering API access is a great way to massively increase
developer workload. If they don't want more money, and they don't want to hire
lots of new developers, what's the incentive for offering an API?

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rms
In 2006, Craigslist's CEO Jim said that if enough users told them to "raise
revenue and plow it into charity" that they would consider doing it. (source:
<http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=4082> )Craigslist could raise a billion dollars
for charity over several years, with a simple text or banner ad. They could
put a large "X" next to the ad, allowing you to permanently close it. There
seems to be little objection to this idea. The optional banner is harmless,
and a billion dollars could be enough to dramatically improve the lives of
millions. As a moral calculus, the decision seems a no brainer.

As a first step for us, the Craigslist users, in telling Craig and Jim what we
think, I started a Facebook group.
<http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=114346357248> It only takes 12 seconds
to show your support. Once we get to 1000 members or so we can take it to
Twitter en masse.

See Mark Bao's blog post, also. [http://markjournal.com/2009/07/craigslist-
advertising-for-ch...](http://markjournal.com/2009/07/craigslist-advertising-
for-charity/)

~~~
netsp
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=784383>

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smokinn
I suppose this could be an interesting series but as far as I can tell all
this article said was: "I'm soon going to write some stuff about craigslist."

~~~
jazzdev
He actually did write an article about Craig's List.

[http://www.wired.com/entertainment/theweb/magazine/17-09/ff_...](http://www.wired.com/entertainment/theweb/magazine/17-09/ff_craigslist)

~~~
bkovitz
Yes. It's not obvious, but there are a bunch of links at the bottom of the
page. Very interesting reading, lots of interesting details.

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dave_au
This bit struck me: "...the vehemence of the editors’ point of view caught me
off guard."

I could be wrong, but is sounds like the editors of a publishing company were
pushing for a negative article about a site that's having an effect on
publishing companies. I always thought that kind of stuff happened indirectly,
through assumptions and implications.

Then again it could just be that they were just excited about an idea for a
story.

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hop
Wired's cover on Craigslist was plain wrong.

Their UI is brilliant, iconic, and works great. Why fix something that's not
broke. And while Wired mag is shrinking and their tech culture authority has
waned, CL is making $100M+ plus and growing with virtually no overhead. Yet
they focus on Newmark's social shortcomings? How about a focus on his P&L, his
dedication, and how he saved consumers billions on classifieds.

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leelin
FWIW, I've been talking to the author about RentHop, so he's doing a decent
amount of original research for the series.

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whatusername
I groan with almost every article about Craigslist - because outside of some
select US cities - is it really that good or popular?

I'm certainly not going to use the melbourne.craigslist.com.au (1 or 2
house/apartments per day and maybe 1 job.. what would be the point compared to
seek.com.au / realestate.com.au

