It's the inevitable fate for anything that uses CL for data. CL is too afraid of competition, yet refuses to innovate. It's a shame.
These are the first noticeable innovations on CL in many years. Might they be the result of the on-going parade of sites improving upon CL w/ their own data, not to mention the criticisms on HN and elsewhere?
Whether they 'hate' competition is debatable. Clearly they view their data as THEIR property. They occasionally let things like PadMapper go while putting the ban hammer down on other things, very arbitrarily.
The Wired story on them about 5-6 years back suggested they are just very skeptical of third parties and human nature in general. It left me with the impression that Craig is just deeply selfish and authoritarian.
"These all signal Newmark and Buckmaster's wariness about what humans, including themselves, might do if given the chance. There may be a peace sign on every page, but the implicit political philosophy of craigslist has a deeply conservative, even a tragic cast. Every day the choristers of the social web chirp their advice about openness and trust; craigslist follows none of it, and every day it grows."
HN discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=784663