Craigslist is Squashing Innovation, and We’re Letting It Happen

I don't believe the author understands innovation, craigslist, or online marketplaces.

1. Innovation is not features. It is utility. The real innovation of craigslist has been to resist so much call for change, especially in tech.

2. Craigslist is a product that works extremely well. It works well for a lot of reasons:

  * The changes in UI are slow, even glacial. That means I don't have to re-orientate every time I visit the site.
  * It works on all browsers known to man (and some unknown).
  * Simplicity in browsing and posting (this is huge)
  * It is fast. Really. Darn. Fast.
  * It does not require a login to use. Only email.

I would say that Craigslist offers some the of the best user experience on the web. I often use it as an example of "WHAT WORKS(TM)"

3. Online marketplaces are successful because of people. Yes, people. Craigslist, is successful because it makes it easy for two parties to transact a deal. That ease comes from making a familiar and simple place to do it. Again. And again. And again. for over a decade.

I wonder if the author is an investor in the half-dozen companies listed at the bottom of that article. Or maybe I'm just cynical...

The thesis of this article seems to be that by sending C&Ds to companies that are scraping their website and using the data for profit, Craigslist is "squashing innovation". This seems crazy. Is the underlying idea that companies scraping Craiglist are like Google crawling the web -- making use of public data? Because Google links back to the source of the data; these companies (mostly) do not.

While I accept that Craigslist has solid network effects going for it that make it hard to compete even with better UI, I don't think you get to go whining to the tech press about the fact that there are natural barriers to entry in your market. Far from "squashing innovation", Craigslist is doing almost nothing to defend its market share.

I may be wrong but this read as a complaint about not being allowed to monetize data that belongs to someone else. Seems to me that if Craigslist doesn't want you to play in their playground then that's fair, it is their playground. Seems there's an entitlement problem here.

Plus he finds all this unacceptable? What's he going to do about it exactly? Write another stern blog post?

Quashing Innovation or merely sending C&D Notices to people scraping their data. There's a difference there.

I'm sure if the author made his own real estate listing site (with it's own database/management/etc.and integrated maps on it) it would not have been an issue.

The problem? They are already fully entrenched in the classified ads market. It's going to take years for something else to become popular.

It's the same thing with Amazon. They treat their sellers like garbage, but it's really the only place you can go if you actually want to make sales.

I don't get it. Craigslist is a company, they have been against 3rd parties using their data for years and they have no obligation to share their data with anyone else.

How is this even an article, and why the hell are we reading it?

It's not squashing innovation, it's just that for selling stuff how many users use the site is far more important than how it looks, or the latest AJAXy widget. Or a JSON API. Or whatever other fancy pants stuff your advisors say you need.

Craigslist is a massively profitable business, businesses don't exist to drive innovation, they exist to pool resources to make more money than each contributor could individually.

Craigslist's only problem is that it disproves the opinion of the OP day in day out and serves as shining beacon reminding people that fancy buttons aren't the only way to make money.

It doesn't even have a Pin it button, how faux pas.

FTA, On TOS's: (I’m not an attorney and I have no desire to read them)

That's pretty damn dangerous in 2012...

Anybody know why craigslist allows some companies / startups to leverage their communities and not others? I can't seem to find any method to the madness. Looks like AirBnB got away with it for the most part, even after some blatant spamming, yet companies like CLmetric or Worthmonkey, that only made listing more informative got shut down. I have been looking at eggdrop and their posts seem to be searchable and they are much bigger than worthmonley or clmetrics ever got. Would love to hear some insight if anybody has any. Are the C&D letters provoked by something, or nothing at all?

This is a terrible article and the author should feel bad for writing it. Craigslist has always had a rule against 3rd party scrapers.

It works hella well. That's innovative.

They nearly killed newspapers in this country, which has nearly killed investigative journalism, which for whatever noble reasons they had is reeeealy bad karma. If anybody wants to put a dent in these fuckers, I'm on board.