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> These companies are basically hogging it because they were able to build the user base

I am all for liberating data and letting startups drink out of the firehose but I have some cognitive dissonance from reading this news.

I know that OLX spends tens of millions of dollars in India and nearby regions to solve the marketplace problem: get a critical mass of buyers and sellers to achieve escape velocity and enjoy growth through network effects[1]. So it's not just that these companies "happened" to build these user bases, they spent money and took early gambles.

This could very well spell the beginning of the end for much of Craigslist's real estate listings (followed by other categories inevitably) unless they have some grand plan to overhaul their UI/UX entirely. Kijiji, OLX, Gumtree are also vulnerable. Maybe even Twitter since it has a habit of shutting down startups built around its feeds.

What should one do if they are at the helm of CL or one of these other companies?

    [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect

> non-profit

Yeah, no. Unless this is done as an institution like Telegram is (it's made by the VK guy, and he's not charging for any part of it) or it's paid for by tax dollars (and then it would only work for some inhabitants of our planet), nothing will happen. Also, that licensing scheme idea is nifty, but it creates a chicken-and-egg problem. I don't think a single company wants to open its silo because of the advantage that it gets, and because they pay money to establish themselves socially (ads and whatnot), so allowing crappier competitors space on your platform makes you suck.

meh. not really religious about it being non-profit. and even then it can be non-profit somewhere other than the US. US is not the be all end all. the world is a big place.

For it to work, it really needs to be user-owned and controlled, otherwise you're just the next company-of-the-week.

no it doesn't. the user delegates their rights to the non-profit which has a democratic governance model. in fact this argument of it being user owned and controlled has totally been proven unworkable. most users don't give a shit, hence it's irrelevant what they think or do. they rather delegate their rights to someone else and let them manage that.

Owned in the sense that it exists for the benefit of the user.

Controlled in the sense that the user has influence over the platform.

All of this over apartment listings? These aren't cancer cures we're talking about, these are for profit listings to sell a product.

Wikipedia?

This sort of data is not really notable enough for wikipedia.

Sorry, I didn't mean it should go in Wikipedia. I was holding Wikipedia up as an example of a non-profit that could do important data management at scale.

Wikipedia is sort of weird (good but unique weird). Anyone can edit it and upload data but hardly anyone does so. It also has really strict policies on e.g. defamation without which a commercial service would quickly become a mess.

Huh? Defamation isn't a problem when craigslist is hosting stuff like classified ads. Why would this suddenly be worse for a non-profit?

I guess that craigslist follows local laws that require e.g. human interaction in certain cases.

I was thinking about some kind of user-owned Database service to ensure the data is forever free. Imagine a discussion board run by any company where you authenticate with your external Bring-Your-Own-Data credentials. Through some SQL-like interface, that site is able to create tables and add data to the database but associating ownership of each piece of data with your identity.

At any time you can revoke your permission for their access to this data, or share it with others. Any modification to that data is version controlled so a hostile site cannot just modify/delete the data you created on it -- you'd still be able to gain access to any old version.

From a developer POV I think the key would be a SQL-like interface with appropriate caching/conflict resolution so you essentially just connect to a locally running proxy. Perhaps the advantage for the developer is some kind of tiered storage (e.g. your 100 GB database of posts is mostly stored in this external database with a 5% hot data cache local).

From a user's POV, you know noone can take your data and hoard it. Transformation of the data from one service to another similar seems like it would be easier compared to hoping someone writes a good API for export/import. E.g. consider if you could write:

      INSERT INTO feedly.reader (SELECT feedname, feed_url FROM google.reader);

to migrate YOUR data from Google Reader to Feedly -- not just in a 3-month sunset period while Reader shuts down, but forever and ever.

If you want to be paranoid, the database could be federated, so rather than it being central, multiple providers can complete for your data.

All this could certainly make compliance with the European data protection act easier.

What you're describing is very similar to Ethereum, a platform for decentralized applications. Its blockchain is a public database for application data that all participants in a system need to agree on. Other data is either messaging to discussing parties, static data on a decentralized store, or private data on your own machine.

Users of software built with this architecture enjoy unlimited uptime: the software is run by the user and a decentralized computer that only stops running when no one wants to use it anymore.

At least in the US, I think satisfying the 'purposes' requirement for non-profit status would be difficult. Just providing a free service isn't enough. Here's the IRS brief description:

"The exempt purposes set forth in section 501(c)(3) are charitable, religious, educational, scientific, literary, testing for public safety, fostering national or international amateur sports competition, and preventing cruelty to children or animals.

source: http://www.irs.gov/Charities-&-Non-Profits/Charitable-Organi...

UPDATE: I confused non-profit and charitable organizations. Disregard.

Welcome to my new religion... All user content welcome! Seriously though, it does not have to be non-profit. It can be for-profit. Just as long as the cause is served.

You can file as a not-for-profit social purposes organization (to incorporate at the state level) without electing to take on IRS non-profit status -- you just need to pay taxes still.

You seem to confusing non-profit status with charitable (501c3) status; a charity is a specific subtype of tax-exempt nonprofit (most notably different from most other nonprofits in that, in addition to the organization being tax-exempt, contributions to the organization are tax-deductible for the donors.)

I wonder about the viability of a 501(c)(6) trade association providing data storage service to dues-paying member companies.

sez it all: 'because they were able to build the user base....'

there is more than one way to skin a cat, just because they were able to do it... say like encyclopedia Britannica, doesn't mean wikipedia can't come along and say f-u.

who's stopping someone from doing that then? im with you.

Did Wikipedia upload all the entries of Encyclopedia Britannica? I wasn't aware.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Encyclop...

Yes. The 1911 Britannica was used to populate many wikipedia articles.

Public domain (if it isn’t obvious from the year), which is a far cry from content that has been just produced or aggregated.

Put it on the blockchain! </half sarcasm>

Everytime I've ever just yelled "BLOCKCHAIN" as a suggested solution has been exactly half sarcastic. It's comical how often that comes up (in startup circles especially) but also so often has a somewhat plausible application.

"Thoughts on BLOCKCHAIN as an antipattern considered harmful" ;)

Just imagine what it will be like when we have a blockchain engineered for affordably storing megabytes of data. Fun times ahead.