Hacker News Reader

Comment by teacup50 | Hacker News Reader

What's so embarrassing, exactly?

It doesn't follow the latest web9.0 flat^Wmaterial^Wlook-a-monkey! design trends?

The interface remains usably utilitarian?

They don't try to capitalize to create an uber-exit that everyone can write a congratulatory comment on YC/TechCrunch about? Great hustle Craig!

Or is it just that you're of the Uber-style ethical camp that believes in disruption-through-cost-externalization? In this case, actively extracting value from Craigslist, despite their protests, and using it to undermine their business.

View on HN

For the record, I'm a fan of the retro design -- or I guess it's original in their case. In any case, I don't mind that.

It's that the product could be better -- as in better features -- in a bout a million ways. How about notifying me when something becomes available for instance... Or showing a map view of apartment listings or heck all listings... Or a bit a zillion search possibilities...like -- here's one -- searching across a whole region or farther for a given item... Or some kind of attempt at reputation building as an option...

That list took maybe 90 seconds... My theory is that they are lazy because they can afford to be and they aggressively defend their laziness by suing anyone who tries to make it better. Finks.

"I'm a fan of the retro design...It's that the product could be better"

Agreed. I gave up on my first experience trying to rent an apartment after getting obviously sketchy responses emails from my inquiries, that was after I had spent hours sifting through the listings and only messaging the few listing that didn't look like scams. It's amazing how difficult it was to find where the approximate location, which definitely would have helped with some very simple non-js map. It shouldn't be that difficult to get a valid description of what I'm looking for.

Have you had ever used Craiglist? Everything you say is alreaady built-in.

Ok it looks like after suing that poor dude, they added a map to the apartment listings finally. I stand corrected on that one. It was missing forever.

I still don't see anywhere to search across regions. If you've ever tried to find a hard to find car you'd understand what I mean there. I'd like to search in, say, all of California. Can't do it.

My point is that there's a lot that could be done that will not be done because they won't let people scrape even if they link back. So, for example, say I wanted to add a state-wide search. Even if all my search results pointed back to CL, CL would cease and desist me. This goes for other enhanced functionality as well. This is all legal, but see it for what it is: an aggressive use of their position to retain their position, which includes squelching any and all uses of their data. It's an anit-competitive move that let's them maintain what, in my opinion, is a very poor quality product for all the traffic and data they get.

Craigslist allowed third party to map listings 10 years ago, and CL

http://www.housingmaps.com/

CL makes no effort to stop people from publishing or viewing ads on other sites. Many multi-posting tools exist, especially for housing.

At least in the UK version, they do have some kind of cross-region search now in the sidebar. (Which is pretty much essential here, because their region boundaries don't make much sense and people don't always agree on what region they're in.)

That's great, and if it's essential for the UK, imagine how needed it must be in the US.

The UK has 243,610 square kilometers. California alone has 423,970.

"Nearby listings" doesn't work like I'd like it to. It'd be great to be able to choose from multiple craigslist areas and run searches on them, distinct of their proximity.

How is Uber disrupting through cost externalization? They disrupt through regulatory arbitrage. They aren't dumping costs onto society.

They have made lots of functional changes in the past two years. Better image presentation; more sorts and filters specific to the category browsed. But before 2013 or so, it really was a POS 2000-era site. craiglook and padmapper, and others that put useful UIs over the dataset, did a real service to the platform and Craigslist destroys them.

Did you read TFA? They always directed users back to the original Craigslist posting, ergo, not undermining CL's business.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com