
C'mon Craiglist, Launch an API Already - apievangelist
http://www.apivoice.com/2012/06/28/cmon-craiglist-launch-an-api-already/
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jawns
There was a discussion in the "Craigslist Crusher" thread a few days ago that
basically pointed out that because Craigslist's main advantage over everyone
else is its user base, and not its pretty site or awesome features, it would
be foolish for them to offer an API, in which others could mooch off the user
base. I tend to agree: From a business standpoint, a Craigslist API has more
cons than pros.

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diego
_"You are missing a HUGE opportunity to extend and control your brand."_

Why? The article doesn't touch on this. Craigslist is already an extremely
successful business. It's not a small startup looking to gain traction. An API
has pros and cons, and Craigslist has a lot to lose. I would expect the author
to show how the pros could outweigh the cons.

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kimmel
There are no pros for craigslist having an API. This is a for-profit company
that has chosen not to be greedy bastards. If they wanted they could have an
advertisement on every single page of the site but they don't. Craigslist is
cost free to almost all users, is fast, and has little down time.

Here are some of the reasons why offering an API is not a good fit for them.

* Craigslist does not need users driven to it which is a side effect of having an API. They are already large and in charge.

* Unless they charge for the API it is a waste of CPU cycles and eventually technical support from an actual person to support this. It is a cost sink.

* Craigslist does not sell anything directly like ebay or amazon. Ebay and Amazon have apis to drive traffic to them. Then a user sells something on the service and ebay/amazon get a cut, that is how their services work, not craigslist.

* "if people care so much about craigslist features, then just build something and offer them the code for free." This was a comment from another user and it makes a great point. Like the engineer who stayed on at Apple to finish his project, something like that could happen to make craigslist better. Has anyone bothered to try and lets see the code?

* craigslist has not shown any intention to move into other markets besides online ads. A publicly facing API would allow others to develop new services and allow craigslist to buy them. This has not happened.

* No major corporation came along and helped craigslist why should they help you? In fact craigslist fought against entrenched newspapers across the globe to create their user base. To sum this point up "There is no such thing as a Free lunch".

I am sure I am forgetting a few other good reasons why they are not offering
an API. To me it comes down to a bunch of people bitching about how they built
a service on top of data they did not own or control and when it was taken
away they act shocked. To me that is just plain business idiocy. If you start
a business one of the first things you do is secure your supply chain, in this
case the apartment listing data.

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perfunctory
C'mon frustrated bloggers, create your own Craiglist already and launch an API
for it.

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16s
Amen brother. Too many young people these days who have contributed nothing to
the building of these major sites think they are entitled to access to them
(however they like) and they then cry and moan about it when they do not get
what they want, when they want it and how they want it.

I'm sure this will be voted down, but every bit of it is true.

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bradleyland
An API seems like the antithesis of Craigslist. Craigslist is the online
classifieds equivalent of the long form sales letter. To contemporary
designers/developers, the design is hideous, the usability sucks, and if you
asked for an off-the-cuff evaluation, most would tell you they (long form
sales letters) won't work. Yet, they do.

Craigslist is similar. The site is sparsely designed, but makes no attempt at
exploiting a minimalist aesthetic that we're used to seeing other places. The
site continues to use bare bones formatting and lacks features that everyone
expects. Forget an API, where are the like/tweet/share/etc buttons?

I think Craigslist's anti-feature pattner works for them. Posting your first
listing to the site has some confusing points, but once you've made your way
through the process once, friction is incredibly low. Craigslist is the
ultimate in low effort online posting. I'm not sure an API would fit with this
product philosophy.

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danielhitome
I don't see why the fuss about Craigslist not providing an API:

1\. Anyone is free to come up with a better provide that serves Craigslist
users' needs, you can argue that craigslist is the dominant player and it's
hard to steal users from them, but many niche-focus startups have proved
otherwise (or they simply don't have a compelling enough products);

2\. When it comes to the time Craigslist fails its users functionally and
aesthetically, it's hard to imagine no other players will surge up in the
game;

3\. Even if Craigslist provides an API now but doesn't improve its user
experience, do we just want it to serve as a database for all other services
that piggyback on Craigslist?

So my message to Craigslist: "Just think hard about how to serve your users
better. You're not an asshole for restricting data access to your site, but it
is irresponsible to waste other engineers lives on trying to defeat you while
you can easily make yourselves better for your users!"

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aw3c2
Why would they? I would be afraid of some service taking away parts of my
offerings. I have no idea how the API would still direct to craigslist but
imagine:

E.g. service A puts up a nice website for nicheB using the API. ServiceA gets
super successful and becomes the #1 go-to site for nicheB. ServiceA lives on
without the API. Craigslist lost nicheB.

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paulsutter
An API would just allow YC startups to come in and strip away Craigslist's
business category by category, as AirBNB did.

It's a wonderful idea for people who want to strip away categories from
Craigslist, but it's a really silly suggestion for Craigslist.

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vaksel
if people care so much about craigslist features, then just build something
and offer them the code for free.

but that's not what this is about...it's about people complaining that
criagslist isn't allowing them to make money from craigslist brand.

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jacoblyles
Craigslist doesn't care about its users. It is a lazy monopoly. There will be
no API.

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dasil003
It's _users_? What do the _users_ care if there is an API? An API just gives
hackers the upper hand in finding the gold in the listings. What Craigslist
doesn't care about are developers who want to scrape their data. That's a tiny
subset and not representative of their _users_.

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rorrr
They do have RSS feeds, which are pretty good already. I'm not sure why
PadMapper can't use them. (Legal maybe?)

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k-mcgrady
There are probably conditions on the use of the feeds. I notice that on a lot
of the big sports websites they bring you to a page showing conditions of use
before they will let you see the RSS feeds. Could be the same thing here.

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derpmeister
If you don't sign the conditions, they aren't legally binding. If you don't
want people to use your RSS feed, don't publish your RSS feed.

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canttestthis
Sign = physically sign? Isn't hitting "I accept" legally binding?

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rorrr
No such thing on Craigslist. You can go straight to the RSS feed.

