Why Craigslist needs to die
arvindn.livejournal.com
arvindn.livejournal.com
The author of this article complains about the "lack of any sophistication in the search" - well thanks to their dead-simple and very functional search available as an RSS feed, I always know instantly when something I'm looking for is locally available in my city.
absence of any form of user reputation - who cares when you are dealing locally, in cash?
the unavailability of map views - nobody cares; craigslist is centered around urban areas, and when urban people look for apartments they usually know the neighborhood. Plus a map is 1 click away.
lack of an API - nobody cares. Not every website needs an API. The author claims that no one can build services on top of craigslist, but that's not true. They have RSS, and that gives access to practically all the data they have.
To anyone who wants to build a Craigslist competitor, I wish them the best of luck; if you build something better, it truly has a chance to succeed. But to claim that Craigslist is a non-functional monopolistic website that's holding back progress in the world of online classifieds is a bunch of BS.
One other thing: If a company did come along and build a site that killed craigslist, you can bet that as soon as CL is gone, the new site will start to become more aggressive with their marketing, put banner ads everywhere and start to do spammy things. I think it's a blessing that the biggest classified ad site in the US is run by a guy who cares more about user-experience than money.
Why should it? Do the users like it as is? Yes (with some exceptions, of course). Then they don't have to do more.
If someone thinks they can do better, no one is stopping them. This is a really weak argument.
Yes, I said Craigslist isn't "doing more," which I used to argue that the time is ripe for someone else to unseat Craigslist. I didn't use it to argue that someone should force them to do more. I don't see the problem.
As a result, if Craigslist was really doing everyone a disservice by not implementing this guy's feature wish list, they'd lose market share to a competitor that actually implemented them. The post tacitly concedes that point by cheering on YC's alleged effort to fund a Craigslist competitor, thus contradicting its own thesis.
The problem with these feature wishlists for Craigslist is that the site works. This particular wishlist is particularly funny, because it consists largely of things that eBay provides --- reputation, semantic search --- without acknowledging that Craigslist currently works better than eBay.
Craig on the other hand, is an American hero.
What Craigslist category is equivalently anticompetitive? Real estate? That's NAR. Rentals? Craigslist may have 50% of that market. Jobs? Craigslist trails all the major jobs sites.
You could build a better product right now and it wouldn't beat CL because the timing isn't right.
I think the biggest problem with Craigslist is they seem like they don't give a shit about their own site. May or may not be true, but it's definitely the perception of a lot of entrepreneurs who envy their success, and are frustrated by their lack of innovation.
The only thing I could imagine an API being used for would be to allow postings from software outside of craigslist. You want to know what 99% of people would use it for? Spamming Craigslist.
Screen scraping craigslist is easy, and I don't mind it at all. Only problem is the fact that if you happen to become successful, they'll shut you down, so there's much of a point.
Still as others have posted, nothing is stopping someone else from coming along and creating CL service that's just better than CL itself. I would welcome one, especially one that handled rental listings better, but I'm not going to hold my breath.
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