

Why Craigslist needs to die - aaco
http://arvindn.livejournal.com/103006.html

======
sounddust
Craigslist is successful because it's awesome.

The author of this article complains about the "lack of any sophistication in
the search" - well thanks to their dead-simple and very functional search
available as an RSS feed, I always know instantly when something I'm looking
for is locally available in my city.

 _absence of any form of user reputation_ \- who cares when you are dealing
locally, in cash?

 _the unavailability of map views_ \- nobody cares; craigslist is centered
around urban areas, and when urban people look for apartments they usually
know the neighborhood. Plus a map is 1 click away.

 _lack of an API_ \- nobody cares. Not every website needs an API. The author
claims that no one can build services on top of craigslist, but that's not
true. They have RSS, and that gives access to practically all the data they
have.

To anyone who wants to build a Craigslist competitor, I wish them the best of
luck; if you build something better, it truly has a chance to succeed. But to
claim that Craigslist is a non-functional monopolistic website that's holding
back progress in the world of online classifieds is a bunch of BS.

One other thing: If a company did come along and build a site that killed
craigslist, you can bet that as soon as CL is gone, the new site will start to
become more aggressive with their marketing, put banner ads everywhere and
start to do spammy things. I think it's a blessing that the biggest classified
ad site in the US is run by a guy who cares more about user-experience than
money.

~~~
brfox
Its not just a "blessing that the biggest classified ad site in the US is run
by a guy who cares more about user-experience than money," it is the main
reason why it is such a success. If someone tried to make gobs of money doing
this or didn't realize the true value of local-only exchanges, then they
couldn't be nearly as popular as craigslist among so many people, geeks and
non-geeks alike.

------
endtwist
Oh please. His main complaint is that Craigslist isn't "doing more."

Why should it? Do the users like it as is? Yes (with some exceptions, of
course). Then they don't have to do more.

If someone thinks they can do better, no one is stopping them. This is a
really weak argument.

~~~
randomwalker
Craigslist's users may like it as it is, but that's only because the majority
who have tried it and are dissatisfied with it don't count as users. I've
heard many, many stories from friends who couldn't effectively find what they
wanted or had unpleasant experiences. That's what prompted me to write the
post. I also helped a team write a business plan for a Craigslist competitor,
and doing the research for that helped me realize there's a lot of ways
Craigslist falls short.

Yes, I said Craigslist isn't "doing more," which I used to argue that the time
is ripe for someone else to unseat Craigslist. I didn't use it to argue that
someone should force them to do more. I don't see the problem.

~~~
tptacek
You have a few anecdotes about people frustrated with Craigslist. But there's
an avalanche of people frustrated with eBay, for similar reasons. We tend to
assume that all the frustrations involved in person-to-person commerce can be
addressed by intermediaries like Craiglist. But who knows if that's actually
true?

------
tptacek
I'm not sure the word "monopoly" means what this person thinks it means.
Craigslist doesn't have a monopoly; in fact, the market for the service
Craigslist provides is dominated by _other_ providers. Craiglist is simply the
best, most powerful provider.

As a result, if Craigslist was really doing everyone a disservice by not
implementing this guy's feature wish list, they'd lose market share to a
competitor that actually implemented them. The post tacitly concedes that
point by cheering on YC's alleged effort to fund a Craigslist competitor, thus
contradicting its own thesis.

The problem with these feature wishlists for Craigslist is that the site
_works_. This particular wishlist is particularly funny, because it consists
largely of things that eBay provides --- reputation, semantic search ---
without acknowledging that Craigslist currently works better than eBay.

------
josefresco
Craig Newmark reminds me a little of Markus Frind. Each comes across as not
being interested in building their business beyond their huge initial success.
However un-motivated they appear to be, change happens and they still manage
to change the online world by simply _not_ doing things that most people think
they _should_ be doing (like this joker)

~~~
brandnewlow
I always get the sense that Markus is full of B.S. and not being truthful with
how he got started, how many visitors he has and where he makes his money.

Craig on the other hand, is an American hero.

------
michael_dorfman
Beyond the inflammatory headline, the author lost all credibility with
_"Craigslist is what it is because the site got lucky"_

~~~
jwesley
I think the most retarded part is where he claims Craigslist is a destructive
monopoly. Yea, Craigslist, using its market position to drive up the rates on
FREE classified ads. Tell the newspaper industry to round up the anti-trust
lobbyists, its on!

~~~
randomwalker
I did claim they have a monopoly position in certain segments. I did not claim
they are destructive. For some reason, people seem to equate monopoly with
"evil." I guess I unintentionally helped that with my comparison to MSIE.
Sorry. I've added a section to the post to clarify what I meant.

~~~
tptacek
The real estate NAR MLS listing services has(/had) a monopoly. There was only
a single provider, you had to be a realtor to manage it, and realtors colluded
to penalize offerings (like FSBO's) that weren't managed through realtors.

What Craigslist category is equivalently anticompetitive? Real estate? That's
NAR. Rentals? Craigslist may have 50% of that market. Jobs? Craigslist trails
all the major jobs sites.

------
rokhayakebe
Why such articles are never written by people who have built something bigger
or better than what they complain about?

~~~
unalone
Because the people who have made bigger and better things show us those
things, rather than just the initial complaining blog post they made.

------
jpcx01
They need an API, badly. Very dumb of them not to have one already. It would
be a huge value add to their service. I don't know what's the problem. Either
they dont have the technical resources (unlikely), or they've made a
conscience decision not to provide one.

I think the biggest problem with Craigslist is they seem like they don't give
a shit about their own site. May or may not be true, but it's definitely the
perception of a lot of entrepreneurs who envy their success, and are
frustrated by their lack of innovation.

~~~
sounddust
Craiglist is a text-only site. What on earth would you do with an API? You can
access everything on the site using RSS feeds. People have done many creative
things with those feeds: Google maps mashups which display apartment listings
on top of crime maps, for example.

The only thing I could imagine an API being used for would be to allow
postings from software outside of craigslist. You want to know what 99% of
people would use it for? Spamming Craigslist.

~~~
jpcx01
RSS was a welcome addition, but its not quite there yet. Any decent mashup
still needs to screen scrape.

Screen scraping craigslist is easy, and I don't mind it at all. Only problem
is the fact that if you happen to become successful, they'll shut you down, so
there's much of a point.

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paul7986
I wonder how much a hit Craiglists would take if it removed, "Random
encounters," and such themed categories.

It's the Internet's porn for females; all text!

------
raheemm
But they could have an api and let others build more apps and make CL
convenient/better where it isn't. On a more fundamental level, competition is
good and CL does not have a competitor that can match its reach and scope.
This is partly because CL is useful, but its also partly because of their huge
network effect. It would be good to have at least one other competitor in this
space.

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sabat
A world with a Craig's List is better than a world without one. But it does
seem like we could use at least a couple more similar sites.

