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Comment by michael_dorfman | Hacker News Reader

Beyond the inflammatory headline, the author lost all credibility with "Craigslist is what it is because the site got lucky"

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I think the most retarded part is where he claims Craigslist is a destructive monopoly. Yea, Craigslist, using its market position to drive up the rates on FREE classified ads. Tell the newspaper industry to round up the anti-trust lobbyists, its on!

I did claim they have a monopoly position in certain segments. I did not claim they are destructive. For some reason, people seem to equate monopoly with "evil." I guess I unintentionally helped that with my comparison to MSIE. Sorry. I've added a section to the post to clarify what I meant.

The real estate NAR MLS listing services has(/had) a monopoly. There was only a single provider, you had to be a realtor to manage it, and realtors colluded to penalize offerings (like FSBO's) that weren't managed through realtors.

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.

Agreed, there's nothing lucky about the success of Craigslist. It's amazing they've been able to be online and out compete for over a dozen years now.

There is definitely something lucky about Craigslist. There is an element of luck in everything and CL was the right product at the right time.

You could build a better product right now and it wouldn't beat CL because the timing isn't right.

I could make a better cheeseburger than McDonald's but I'm damn well not gonna get billions and billions served.

There's luck in every success. But that doesn't mean that success is attributable to luck.

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