Why Craigslist needs to die
arvindn.livejournal.comCraigslist is successful because it's awesome.
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.
Its not just a "blessing that the biggest classified ad site in the US is run by a guy who cares more about user-experience than money," it is the main reason why it is such a success. If someone tried to make gobs of money doing this or didn't realize the true value of local-only exchanges, then they couldn't be nearly as popular as craigslist among so many people, geeks and non-geeks alike.
Oh please. His main complaint is that Craigslist isn't "doing more."
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.
Craigslist's users may like it as it is, but that's only because the majority who have tried it and are dissatisfied with it don't count as users. I've heard many, many stories from friends who couldn't effectively find what they wanted or had unpleasant experiences. That's what prompted me to write the post. I also helped a team write a business plan for a Craigslist competitor, and doing the research for that helped me realize there's a lot of ways Craigslist falls short.
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.
You have a few anecdotes about people frustrated with Craigslist. But there's an avalanche of people frustrated with eBay, for similar reasons. We tend to assume that all the frustrations involved in person-to-person commerce can be addressed by intermediaries like Craiglist. But who knows if that's actually true?
I'm not sure the word "monopoly" means what this person thinks it means. Craigslist doesn't have a monopoly; in fact, the market for the service Craigslist provides is dominated by other providers. Craiglist is simply the best, most powerful provider.
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 Newmark reminds me a little of Markus Frind. Each comes across as not being interested in building their business beyond their huge initial success. However un-motivated they appear to be, change happens and they still manage to change the online world by simply not doing things that most people think they should be doing (like this joker)
I always get the sense that Markus is full of B.S. and not being truthful with how he got started, how many visitors he has and where he makes his money.
Craig on the other hand, is an American hero.
Beyond the inflammatory headline, the author lost all credibility with "Craigslist is what it is because the site got lucky"
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.
Why such articles are never written by people who have built something bigger or better than what they complain about?
Because the people who have made bigger and better things show us those things, rather than just the initial complaining blog post they made.
They need an API, badly. Very dumb of them not to have one already. It would be a huge value add to their service. I don't know what's the problem. Either they dont have the technical resources (unlikely), or they've made a conscience decision not to provide one.
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.
Craiglist is a text-only site. What on earth would you do with an API? You can access everything on the site using RSS feeds. People have done many creative things with those feeds: Google maps mashups which display apartment listings on top of crime maps, for example.
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.
RSS was a welcome addition, but its not quite there yet. Any decent mashup still needs to screen scrape.
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.
I'd be surprised if the Craigslist team doesn't "..give a shit about their own site". On the contrary, I'm quite sure they care about it very much. Perhaps they're not interested in doing more via features and would rather spend their time doing things like setup the Craigslist Foundation (http://craigslistfoundation.org/). The thing about Craigslist is that it's dead simple, which is appealing to most people who use the web and don't want to understand what's going on under the hood. Something like an API might entertain you and I but I doubt it would serve their larger user base.
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.
I wonder how much a hit Craiglists would take if it removed, "Random encounters," and such themed categories.
It's the Internet's porn for females; all text!
But they could have an api and let others build more apps and make CL convenient/better where it isn't. On a more fundamental level, competition is good and CL does not have a competitor that can match its reach and scope. This is partly because CL is useful, but its also partly because of their huge network effect. It would be good to have at least one other competitor in this space.
A world with a Craig's List is better than a world without one. But it does seem like we could use at least a couple more similar sites.