Hacker News Reader

Comment by steadicat | Hacker News Reader

Not very convincing. We all know the value that Padmapper brings to apartment seekers. What's harder to explain is what (if any) value Padmapper brings to Craigslist. That's really the case you'd have to make to get Craigslist to reconsider.

Also, as much as I hate to say this, the “they didn’t do anything wrong” argument is very weak. Scraping the site explicitly goes against Craigslist’s TOS:

Any copying, aggregation, display, distribution, performance or derivative use of craigslist or any content posted on craigslist whether done directly or through intermediaries (including but not limited to by means of spiders, robots, crawlers, scrapers, framing, iframes or RSS feeds) is prohibited.

View on HN

"What's harder to explain is what (if any) value Padmapper brings to Craigslist."

The most compelling value that Padmapper added to craigslist was that it didn't make me want to tear my own eyes out, like the regular CL site does.

That does not provide value to Craigslist: that provides value to you. Please explain how they provide value to /Craigslist/.

By maximizing the number of people who find ads relevant to them.

It's easy to miss relevant stuff on Craigslist. I used PadMapper to find my current place. I was the only person that week who put in an offer; had I missed his ad his place would have stayed unoccupied another week at least.

That provides value to the landlord, of course, but since Craigslist charges landlords for access, increased value to landlords means increased revenue potential for Craigslist, which is certainly of value to them.

Craigslist has been quoted, to an audience of investors, with not caring to maximize revenues. Regardless, don't you think Craigslist would see the effects of PadMapper going dark, and that would be the judge of it being a lucrative venture?

The question was how Padmapper provides value to Craigslist. I answered that. The increased value is true whether or not Craigslist wants to maximize revenue.

"That's really the case you'd have to make to get Craigslist to reconsider."

There's also the possibility of making the case that shutting down PadMapper is really, really bad PR. Not to mention that there are more options here than simply killing PadMapper or returning to the prior status quo.

99% of people that use cragslist could care less. Plus, I'm pretty sure it would hurt craigslist a lot more if padmapper were to start directly competing with them.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com