I think this is a great thing -- if Craigslist can get enough bad press from this, then maybe a movement for "free and copyable" classifieds listings can take place, and there can be competition in the space again.
- kill Padmapper instantly by building a map function to view their listings.
- elect not to build a map feature because they think it's trivial and they believe no one cares. So Padmapper should languish.
- buy Padmapper for a little bit of money and have Eric help make their product better.
- hire Eric to make their product better.
- invest a little money into Padmapper as a hedge and hope it does well.
- charge Padmapper a data access fee
These are all totally reasonable options.
Instead, Craig turned to the lawyers and sued Padmapper for using Google's listings and decided that all CL posts are now their exclusive property. If CL really didn't want this data out in the wild, they'd prevent Google from indexing their site.
This is not only a dick thing to do, it's an especially dick thing to do if you sit on the board of The Sunlight Foundation and the advisory board of Wikimedia.
Craig Newmark is a lazy monopolist at this point. All profit taking, no innovation.
You speak as though CL is broken, and it clearly isn't, as a marketplace it functions well. You may not like the website, but it's marketplace first, website second. If you want to sell something, it has the inventory and the customers.
Craid had to sue PM, it's just business, it wasn't a personal attack or a "dick thing" as you seem to think.
People, why aren't we just getting together to do just this, we've got UX people, web people, team management types and coders out the wazoo here. Let's just make a new craiglist already.
PS: I forgot, we've got marketing genius's here to, that can make miracles happen with just about zero dollars.
PPS: It doesn't matter how much that saying irritates you, as a business owner, try being successful without customers. If anything the saying is truest only when a majority of the customers believe the same thing, but there is still truth in it. (Obviously a jerk customer that other customers would shun will have no impact on you if you say I won't serve you.) "The customers are always right" :)
Someone said/typed once that there will be no big CL killer - that they'll be pecked to death by many small replacements, such as Etsy in the crafts space. PM should be the CL replacement for the housing market, and their biggest problem to solve now is getting listings from another source, hopefully from landlords listing directly with them.
Harsh words but they ring true.
People seems to think that PM is the good guy and CL the bad guy I just see it a buiness trying to profit over one that's already existing and has a strong user base
The question is whether or not there's room for a craigslist clone, particularly one that can succeed by sharing its data openly with third-parties.
In truth, I'm doubtful. My reluctant conclusion is that there is, in fact, value in preventing the data from being spread across multiple interfaces and platforms, which itself could confuse users. This was essentially Twitter's stance when it came time to solidify their brand and reduce the number of clients.
There is real user value in knowing how their listing will be presented. I mean, if I'm listing a room for rent and "DruggieCriminalRoommateFinder" syndicates my listing, I'm probably not going to be happy with the response quality.
A marketplace can be popular and still broken. I think Craigslist's extreme insistence on not developing their product may have been a great move once upon a time but is catching up with them. PadMapper and apartment rentals is just one example.
I'm guessing you've never had to find an apartment on Craigslist. Sifting through spam, scams, fake listings by agents, listings that have already been sold... sure, you can do it, but it's not efficient.
We don't bookmark facebook.com we rely on the browser history, having typed it in to the address bar once. They use google to search for the link to the facebook login.
They hear that CL is the biggest site for classified ads, so they post there. They don't care that padmapper will put their apartment on a map, they don't care about other sites.
CL did the hard work of attracting the people to the marketplace. Padmapper is not doing any of that hard work. It is my opinion, if you're doing the hard work of building the community and attracting the users, then you'll agree with CL on this issue. If you're a repackager, then you'll side with padmapper.
If your business idea is "Some corner of Craigs List with a better UI" then by all means, build the UI and then convince people to GIVE you their data.
Anecdotally, whenever I've used Padmapper to find a new apartment I would end up on craiglist.com anyway as Padmapper would often not contain the real estate agent's contact information.
I've never spent more than a week looking for a new place, and wouldn't consider using any service other than craigslist to do so.
Clearly the experience in other markets is not so positive.
As far as I can tell by looking at housingmaps, it's identical to padmapper, which tells me it's going to be shut down soon.
http://techcrunch.com/2009/12/16/craigslist-yahoo-pipes/
Craigslist is broken. And successful. Those aren't mutually exclusive things. Newspapers are broken yet they'll do nearly $20 billion of dollars in revenue this year. They were broken and did peak revenue in 2005. Nokia was broken but had record profits two years ago. RIM was broken and did record profits last year.
Craigslist will eventually lose. It's just going to take longer than any of us reasonably expect.
This argument is way overblown. If you ask most companies for the data they generate, they would say no. So singling out Craigslist and using that as an argument as to why Craig is a "jerk" is silly because he would be in good company if that were the case.
Bottom line is that CL isn't a hard site to reproduce and even do it in a better fashion. The moment that other sites can start using CL data is the moment that the CL stranglehold will slip. Currently, others can build a product and then fight for users to come. If they were able to use CL data they would eliminate the chicken and egg problem and can slowly get their own data 'til they wouldn't need CL data. How is that in CL's interest to let that happen?
1) Spam, Scams, and false postings 2) Postings not taken down because they've already been sold 3) Terrible interface for adding pictures, uploading media to help sell.
Generally, the guy is sitting on top of a monopoly and is actively choosing to do nothing with it other than collect money, and prevent anyone from usurping his throne.
Now, is PadMapper out of line by stealing their data? Sure, why not. Is CraigsList out of line for wanting exclusive license on their listings? Probably not.
But when you add that monopoly, and then stifle innovation because you are either lazy or incompetent is not doing the world any good. My guess is - everyone thinks CraigsList works wonderfully because we haven't had an opportunity to see anything better. Its like saying Camera phones are the best thing ever, but its because you've never seen an iPhone.
There is nothing stopping somebody from coming up with a site that beats craigslist, nothing at all. It will be hard, for sure, but it can and will be done eventually. So it isn't really preventing anybody from usurping his throne.
"But when you add that monopoly, and then stifle innovation because you are either lazy or incompetent is not doing the world any good. "
I hear this argument over and over, that CL is stifling innovation and I just don't see it. It seems like a bunch of would-be competitors want an easy in. There is nothing stopping a competitor from taking over, except a large amount of work. Just because a company won't let anybody use their data, doesn't mean they are stifling innovation. It would be a different story if CL tried to claim IP protection on internet classifieds but that isn't the case.
I feel that the people are being extraordinarily harsh on Craigslist with requests that would be laughed at if you brought them to another company. Although that being said, CL is in a unique position where they have been able to hold their market share without innovation or even much change.
Not that I expect them to actually try to enforce it in that way, of course.
No, I do not think that has anything to do with the new craiglist terms of service. The new terms of service just prevents other people from copying the content of the craigslist ad.
So, no the hypothetical woman selling the couch would not be affected by the new terms in any way.
Um...
>> the exclusive right to enforce copyrights against anyone copying, republishing, distributing or preparing derivative works without its consent
Where does it say anything about "other people?" I mean, I doubt Craigslist would sue an actual user for posting on EBay, but they might send EBay a takedown notice for that content.
And if I wrote a piece of software that helped you post the same thing simultaneously on Craigslist and EBay, I bet they'd sue me.
That's not what this is about. CL doesn't care where you post it, or how many times you post it. CL just doesn't want others scraping their website and posting it for you. This is direct action on CL against Padmapper.
Do you really think CL is just going to politely ask?
They can politely ask the poster and see if they posted it elsewhere. If yes, nothing else needs to be done. If no, they are probably going to find out the extent the external website has gone to.
You may be happy to rely on vague "oh, we don't actually enforce that clause" but some of us prefer not to sign away rights for nothing.
I think in the end they will die, as better sites replace them (piecewise probably, I doubt there will be another general purpose classified site that pops up), but it will be because there is a better alternative in place.
I just don't see this being the downfall of Craigslist.
Fact of the matter is, if I'm posting something on Craigslist then the important thing to me is that it show up on Craigslist. If I wanted it on some other service then I'd post it there. In fact, I'm surprised they haven't had that clause in there from day one. As a user of the site it would be disconcerting to get a response from a person using a site I've never heard of before.
The more I think about it, the more I'm siding with Craigslist on this.
Turn the tables a bit. If Craigslist started it's own rental mapping site using PadMapper's data (HTML, CSS and Javascript files...) they'd clearly be in the wrong. PadMapper is using different data from Craigslist, but I dont' see how it's any less wrong.