Prostitution and Spam Killed Craigslist
ashlan.com
ashlan.com
Their 2021 revenue was $660 million, before pandemic - it was $1 Billion. Of course, it's not anywhere close to FAANG level, but better than many of the other struggling companies. I'd have that 'killed business' any day.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/craigslist-revenue-...
The few times I've posted stuff, I was inundated with phishing attacks. I was talking to a friend about it, and he actually fell for one of the attacks and had to spend a shit load of time getting his phone number back after they stole it. I actually found guidance from, I think, the FCC on what to do if you're the victim of this. Suggesting that this is a serious problem that FB isn't effectively dealing with.
CL all day, especially for the kind of stuff I buy and sell.
That being said, I don't like the idea of making posts in a place that I know paint me as a target for scammers. There's always the possibility of them using a unpatched exploit against me.
On the other hand they've had some luck actually getting rid of stuff, so that's been good.
As English speakers you are so much easier targets.
Lots of people use craigslist regardless of Facebook marketplace or whatever else..
- The search doesn't support basic boolean modifiers such as AND, OR, NOT, or quotation (try to find a "day bed" without getting flooded with "bed" results)
- their filter complications (e.g. vehicle year) are completely hardcoded (try searching for a motorcycle instead of a vehicle and you completely lose vehicle specific filtering)
- they untoggle "local pickup only" whenever possible to force you into seeing "ships to you" results
- They will deliver you an infinite number of results even when the number of relevant results is few, including in violation of the filters you set like distance or vehicle make.
- More relevant results will end up interspersed with very irrelevant ones, forcing you to keep scrolling to find what you are looking for.
All of these things coincidentally have the result of keeping you on the site longer and seeing more ads in opposition to the implied goal of connecting buyers and sellers effectively. This is particularly bad in my opinion because every failure of FB to connect a buyer and seller is both a potential purchase of a new piece of junk and a potential trashing of the old, still functional piece of junk.
FB Marketplace is an amazing example of social network effects and the power of social networks to use them to demolish competition with a (intentionally? imo, yes) worse version of the service.
I don't think 'killed' is the right word, it just wasn't the right platform.
> Back in the day, I would pursue Craigslist when I was bored and needed something.
Back in the day when I lived in NorCal, I would receive Craiglist via email every week to find out what shows were playing in San Fran, because that's all it was. It's like what happened to SXSW: it used to be for music, now it became some weird tech behemoth.
And coincidentally Craig Newmark is a billionaire.
Wouldn't that fall under the "prostitution" part of the title? From what I understand there isn't/wasn't an actual dating section it was all prostitution ads for years.
If CL's values as a company were different, then maybe they would have decided to become a rent-seeker like Facebook, with a six-figure employee headcount and a multi-billion dollar ad business.
Edit: My fault for using a loaded term like 'burner'. I don't have a facebook account. I created a 'real' account that I intended to use for marketplace. Apparently the lack of posting and/or lack of phone number is the issue facebook has, which is the issue I have with it.
On one hand, I enjoy potential for anonymity on the web, and even in a social network I want there to be an option to contribute thoughts/opinions/content anonymously. FB & Twitter's veiled (not even upfront and honest!) insistence on phones is awful.
On the other hand, when it comes to marketplace, I very much don't want to have a no-name random person with burner phone and fake account showing up to my door to pick up synths or cameras or baby stuff :-/
That's an interesting perspective. Is it the 'burner' aspect that you don't want, or the lack of being able to look at someone's social media to determine if this is someone you want to do business with?
If I buy or purchase something from FB marketplace, it's because I desire the real or perceived assurance of a real permanent public identity. Or to put it another way, I want their stake in the game to be comparable to mine.
If somebody is contacting me on FB marketplace in an anonymous fashion with no history or traceability, to me, they're voiding the benefit of FB marketplace. It becomes an uncomfortable asymmetric situation, and I see no benefit, and multiple drawbacks, of engaging with them with my full public, historic, traceable personality, against their black box.
There is nothing wrong with the anonymous mode, in fact it's great - as long as it's symmetric.
If my SugahHoney2001 meets your RoosterBooster17 in a parking lot via Kijiji to exchange some cameras, cool.
If my John Smith meets your Jane Doe at my doorstep with full identity on FB or Linked in to buy some synths, cool.
But if my Tom Jones, 57, Brampton, working for Microsoft, 845 public photos, hobbies of square dancing and kite gliding, is approached by your ___ from ___ and ____, I'm not going to respond - it's placing all the risk and commitment on one side of transaction.
Hope that elaborates my personal perspective somewhat :)
Unknown people driving by at 2am, folks who look straight out of a ‘COPS’ lineup showing up then ‘not having all the cash’, etc.
Meeting in a public place saves some of the hassle, but adds another - lots of flakes, and time spent getting to and from.
If the item is big ticket enough it’s worth it, but man is it a waste of human effort most of the time. Sad.
With time being more scarce for me now personally, I also just can’t justify dealing with it most of the time.
Anything that is meh but someone from friends or family would like I give away.
Then I throw away. Even giving stuff away for free can be too much hassle if you put stuff online.
Does anybody know of other websites like this, perhaps in other countries?
VK.com essentially gets by just by copying American social media companies functionality and offering them to people living in the former USSR.
> They don't move around things for change the design for the sake of change.
should omit "move around things for" or "change the design for"
Facebook marketplace - as basic as it is, does a much better job of "finding" what you're looking for. In Canada, kijiji (bought by ebay at some point) took it's lunch before marketplace ate them both.
Not saying that's good or bad, but that's what killed craigslist.
The Department of Homeland Security has a great section on their website about human trafficking, what it is, how to identify it, how to report it, and so on:
https://www.dhs.gov/blue-campaign/what-human-trafficking
Also, Girls Educational & Mentoring Services (GEMS) has been doing a great job at not just helping to raise awareness of the issue, but also has directly helped trafficking victims get out of dangerous situations and back onto healthy paths in life: