Ask HN: Why isn't this site as successful as Craigslist? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why isn't this site as successful as Craigslist?

This site is basically the same thing as Craigslist, except it has fancier design and allows sales of pets www.kijiji.com. I came across it because I'm looking to get a second dog.

So, why isn't it competitive with Craigslist? If I knew the answer to this question, then it would make me a better hacker and entrepenuer. Is it just because Craigslist was first? I think that's a facile answer.

Y-Combinator is looking to fund a Craigslist competitor, but before they do, they should ask themselves this same question, and the corollary - if not this site, then what would it take to unseat, or even compete with Craiglist?

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Most big web companies started out either by design or fortitude by applying crossing the chasm techniques.

1. Define the large market.

2. Focus entirely on one small niche within that large market that will give you enough credibility to win over the late majority in the latter. See facebook [harvard college social], myspace [music], bebo [birthday reminders], craigslist [local events in san fran] etc.

3. Own > 90% of your niche

4. Cross the chasm into the large market. The market adoption curve demographics of the large market should ideally match the niche you chose.

BTW it is unlikely that a "tech" audience are a good niche to pick, as they do not contain many peers for the larger market to identify with. It will be interesting to look at twitter in a few years to see if it crosses the chasm into the mainstream user.

I'd say read the book. It's a classic.

Most dot-com sites are kind of scummy. E-commerce dot-com sites are especially scummy. eBay is one of the scummiest of all the sites that aren't out-and-out scams. Craigslist kicks their ass primarily by being trustworthy, IMHO.

I can't agree with this comment enough-- on every other site you feel like they just want as much of your money as possible. Craigslist feels like your favorite uncle made you a website, and it may be a bit simple, but you can feel the TLC invested in it.

Craig clearly and explicitly treats Craigslist like a nonprofit, so he's leaving a lot of value "on the table" that he isn't extracting. I'd say this value goes to Craigslist users. If you use both eBay and Craigslist a lot, and I do, you can feel the difference pretty strongly...

I wouldn't suggests a frontal attack. I'd suggest initially focusing either on a type of ad Craigslist is ill-suited for, or a technology that would be very useful in classified ads but which Craigslist ignores because they never change the site. Use that to get a toe-hold, then gradually expand. Ideally the new approach would seem as different from Craigslist as Craigslist does from classified ads in newspapers.

Incidentally, I wouldn't suggest a frontal attack on any established company. The method should always be to take over some territory they're overlooking (ideally because they're in denial about it), and then expand from there.

Did you get that out of Crossing the Chasm, or think of it yourself from experience? Or is it just obvious to people with a good head for business?

I'd heard that Crossing the Chasm talks about this sort of things, but I've never actually read it. I think most startup founders figure this out.

Craigslist started with a lot of word of mouth marketing. It was the de facto classifieds site in the Bay Area before it opened for other cities. It started as and still is essentially a not-for-profit.

On a side note, Craigslist is hardly successful outside of the US. Even in London it's got no traction.

Craigslist is not a non-profit. They've had well over $100MM in revenue for several years running, and that is mostly split by Craig and Jim. The "non-profit" aspect of Craigslist is a myth that they play up.

You should read up on the economics of our industry. This book is a good place to start:

http://www.squeezedbooks.com/book/show/7/information-rules-a...

Basically, there are what are called "positive network externalities" or "network effects" for a site like craigslist: if you you want to sell something, you want to go where lots of buyers are. If you want to buy stuff, you'll get a better selection where there are lots of sellers.

I agree, network effects is the answer. All other explanations about "feeling the love" and "unsophisticated design" are post-hoc justifications.

Network effects is as glib an answer as "got there first."

These things can be a factor, but are not an explanation.

I don't know why first mover advantage wouldn't be a good explanation for this case. Just because other companies squandered their first mover advantage doesn't mean they didn't have it initially. The big barrier to entry for a Craigslist competitor would seem to be brand identity since people want to buy and sell where they know other people are buying and selling. First mover advantage plays a big part in establishing that brand identity.

"Got there first" is an explanation. It's an explanation of why some American pioneers became rich in railroads and slightly later arrivals didn't, for example.

It's not the only factor, but it's an important one.

I'd say "got big first" is a slightly more accurate phrasing, but the gist is the same.

A few other people already mentioned network effects: It's why Ebay rules over auctions. If you're looking to sell something, you want to go to the place that already has the most buyers. If you're looking to buy something, you want to go to the place with the most sellers/selection. It's cyclical - the bigger the network gets, the more people want to and even have to use that network to be a serious player.

One way you could beat Craigslist: Start in one local region and build a hell of a community around it. Maybe have parties or events. Get everyone in the city talking about it, and own that city. Make it so that everyone in that city chooses the new local competitor over Craigslist.

Another: Find one thing Craigslist is doing really poorly, and do that really, really well. Focus only on that and branch out from there.

If you want to fight an empire, you don't march out the same sets of troops as them into the plains to fight. You go find a tiny, isolated, already unhappy part of their empire, and you raise hell there. Build support for the cause. Get more troops, supplies, allies, experience. Realistically speaking, there won't be a "craigslist killer" that comes out of nowhere with better classifieds unless it's backed by someone that already runs things. Someone like Google might be able to do it by making a push on sites that people already use a lot, similar to the way they're pushing Chrome right now. But if you're starting from scratch?

Then think small. What or where is Craigslist failing? Go there. Take over that place. Then branch out.

I'm not sure that "because X was first" is that much different than "because X has users" or "because X has 90% of the market", so that isn't really that shallow of an answer. The challenge is to get people to switch services from one that they are already comfortable and successful using, and sites like craigslist, ebay, and google already have a significant headstart by being both first (long ago) and good.

It's not just enough to say "we have a better search engine than google" if you want to dethrone google, you actually have to be better (although the former may get you funding). Witness Cuil. Or Live -- who tried to pay people to use their search engine: even the lure of easy money isn't enough to get people to switch. With places like craigslist and ebay, the first mover advantage is significant. These sites bring two parties together. Those who have something to sell and those who have something to buy. The sellers want to be where the buyers are and the buyers will go where the sellers are.

It is possible to have a successful business as a small time competitor to an established, entrenched player, but if your goal is to be competitive, you've got a long uphill battle ahead of you. It may be wiser to redefine the industry or look at it from another angle, then tackle that. What does craigslist do really bad that could be better? Is the lack of a competitor that eases that pain the reason why people still use the incumbent?

I'm not sure what craigslist's weak points are. The site is extremely minimal, search works reasonably well, people automatically sort most things into the right places (because otherwise they'd be wasting their time), the majority of posters don't need to pay, fraud is managed well enough that people are not looking for something else. I can't think of any weak points -- which may be why I'm not working on craigslist competitor.

I'm not sure what craigslist's weak points are

Craigslist is good for some things but it has a lot of trash posts. Sometimes I get lucky and someone happens to have what I want but it's easy to get bogged down by all the junk. These days if I don't find what I'm interested in there very quickly I go to someplace with a better signal/noise ratio. I wouldn't compete directly with them unless I had a way to improve that.

The problem with attacking that weak point is that the amount of annoying trash on craigslist is apparently dwarfed by the useful non-trash, despite the possibility that other sites may a lower actual percentage of trash. Which is most likely a function of popularity: a just-as-popular competitor would have just as much trash as craigslist. But competition is not just about user experience, if you had a way to improve the signal-to-noise ratio, you'd have to do it for cheaper than craigslist does it, and considering the amount of trash, they aren't spending a whole lot of money on fixing this weak point.

I mean, you spelled it out right there: if you don't find what you want on craigslist _first_, then you go someplace else. craigslist apparently has enough value, and it's easy enough to determine if you're going to get any value out of any one visit, that you don't bother going someplace else _first_. It is not a last resort visit, the craiglist competitor sites are the last resorts.

So it's the same answer again: craigslist is where majority of the users are.

Agreed that the chief problem of Craigslist as I try to use it is the large number of trash posts. Figuring out a way to filter providers (a la Angie's list?)

http://www.angieslist.com/Angieslist/

would make for a better experience for buyers of services. But maybe that isn't the main business model of Craigslist anyway, so maybe Craigslist is happy enough with the status quo.

If you post something and it gets flagged and removed, there's no way to tell what you did wrong.

Here in India, where no classifieds site has emerged a clear winner, Kijiji is among the leading sites. just my 2 cents

what are the main sites in india

there is a site called olx.in which is in heavy promotion mode; adwords on most google searches, then there are several niche-based classifieds sites, for eg for property there is 99acres.com and magicbricks.com, for matrimonial-related ads (nope, no real "personals" here, ppl prefer to directly get married :) ) there is shaadi.com, naukri.com for jobs, some misc regional sites, etc.. like I mentioned, no clear leader has emerged.

they all seem like top tier commercial niches, anything like craigslist emerging? is this an opportunity even if launched in a particular city

First of all, that name. What were they thinking? Second of all, read the other comments. They summed it up quite nicely :)

That was my first instinct, too. I've been looking at the name for about 5 minutes and I'm still not sure how it's spelled. Plus, if one of my co-workers turned around and asked me where he could sell something online, I'd probably say, "Oh you should go to kih-jih...kih-jih-jih-jih....craigslist"

Actually, of the two, I think Craigslist has the worse name. It's like if Yahoo! (originally "Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web") had settled on jerrysguide.com.

Ask yourself: why would kijiji be competitive with craigslist? What advantage do they have?

I suspect:

* Buying pets is not a killer app for craigslist-like sites

* The fancier design is a net negative

craigslist has a pretty good lock on what craigslist does -- they don't charge users for much, have the userbase, have a simple UI.

For whatever reason, Kijiji was launched outside of the U.S. first and has only been active in the U.S. since 2007 (2005 elsewhere).

Kijiji is very competitive with craigslist in several countries.

Canada: http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?cc=CA&ts_mode=cou... http://siteanalytics.compete.com/kijiji.ca+craigslist.ca/?me...

Germany: http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?cc=DE&ts_mode=cou... http://siteanalytics.compete.com/kijiji.de+craigslist.de/?me...

I think it might take over Craigslist, maybe they just started out later. In Germany I don't think Craigslist is that well known. When I needed to sell something recently that wasn't a good fit for ebay, I also found Kijiji and will probably keep using it.

We are working on something in that area in Germany, Kijiji doesn't compete because it's ebay. That's my personal opinion. They chose the worst name ever and they don't have their priorities clear, it's not a "used goods" market with enforced standards it's just a market.

The basic problem in this area is reach, but that's not a problem or ebay so asking why kijiji fails is not going to answer your questions for a startup.Different situation different problems.

Twitter could unseat Craigslist, especially for employee classifies. I.E. I Twittered Im looking for a graphic designer and boom I got 20 designers (non followers) @reply to me. Each had a portfolio and I could get a better sense for who they are via their Twitter stream.

I prefer this over posting on a job board, as it's quicker and some other things too!

Network effects. Brand/mindshare.

One pattern that you could apply to break craigslist would be focus: http://ycombinator.com/munger.html [Search for 'travel magazine'].

You'd want to pick a suitable niche within craigslist and service that like crazy. Then move on to others.

The name doesn't stand out - it's complicated and hard to remember the spelling, plus it arrived after Craigslist was already popular.

Of course, Craigslist isn't nearly as big in other countries - In the UK gumtree is the winner, and in Norway finn.no is the place to go for classifieds.

1) Name. "Kijiji"?

2) Layout. Craigslist is beautifully simple. Kijiji looks like "web 2.0".

It started much later?

For some reason it has taken off in Toronto though.

It's worth noting that Kijiji and Gumtree are both owned by eBay. eBay also owns a stake in Craigslist.

because its just a clone. Haveing a "fancier" design and bending some rules != innovation

Did you talk to craigslist users and see what they wanted changed? Is allowing sales of pets a deal breaker?

Because its fucking hard to spell.

It is very successful actually. It's one of the top classified sites in most countries - if you are so narrow minded that you only look at one country, then that is your main problem as an entrepreneur.

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