Craigslist has been disrupted • Hacker News Board

Re: Craigslist has been disrupted

#61

Post by blhack » Sat, Apr 02, 2011, 1:11 AM UTC

Klinky wrote: post #37

danilocampos wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that they haven't done the things you describe doesn't change the fact that craigslist is a terrible product. It is clogged with spam. Clever types of spam, often ones that crowdsource their content by mining previously legit posts. Since there are no reputation mechanisms to speak of, it's far too easy to waste your time with stuff that's either spam or a scam. Meanwhile, data visualization has progressed d…

Wading through apartment listings, for example, is miserable, and there are almost no mechanisms in place to encourage that very basic information is communicated by people listing their properties. Where is a good place to look for apartments? Most "apartment search" sites that look prettier than CL usually are cluttered with a high ads to info ratio, inaccurate info and/or are slow to load/navigate...

I like http://hotpads.com quite a bit

Re: Craigslist has been disrupted

#62

Post by kj12345 » Sat, Apr 02, 2011, 1:12 AM UTC

protomyth wrote: post #20

What's wrong with just being a stable place? Why does everything have to evolve? Craigslist works fine for a lot of people. It is familiar, doesn't hog bandwidth, and doesn't leak personal information like a sieve. Sometimes a hammer just needs to keep being a hammer.

Great point. I think this concept of "disruption" is out of place anyway when the existing site is mostly free and works fine on mobile devices. You might be able to steal traffic bit by bit by doing a better job, but there's nothing to really disrupt in a dramatic way.

Re: Craigslist has been disrupted

#63

Post by r0s » Sat, Apr 02, 2011, 1:42 AM UTC

danilocampos wrote: post #23

nir wrote: post #8

>"I don't think Craig's a bad guy, but he's harvesting $50M a year into his pockets and not improving the site" Not sure about the definition of "improving the site" here. I'm thankful to CL for not building gratuitous UI, or half assed "social" element, or "tweet this post to your social graph". Instead they work on improving the content by fighting certain types of abuse, having the founder do customer support and…

The fact that they haven't done the things you describe doesn't change the fact that craigslist is a terrible product. It is clogged with spam. Clever types of spam, often ones that crowdsource their content by mining previously legit posts. Since there are no reputation mechanisms to speak of, it's far too easy to waste your time with stuff that's either spam or a scam. Meanwhile, data visualization has progressed d…

> It is clogged with spam. Clever types of spam, often ones that crowdsource their content by mining previously legit posts.

And which popular services are immune to this?

Re: Craigslist has been disrupted

#64

Post by originalgeek » Sat, Apr 02, 2011, 1:56 AM UTC

adammichaelc wrote: post #54

originalgeek wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that is how most of my interactions with Craigslist have gone off. However, there have been some more frustrating experiences. My friend getting his ad ghosted, when he was trying to post his mom's guest house for rent. And it costing them 3 months of rent because Craigslist didn't let on a peep that his ad was ghosted. And there really isn't any clue on how to find help, I got lucky and found the forums via a Go…

Had to look that one up. Pretty circular definition. http://www.urbandictionary.com/iphone/#define?term=ghosted

It's Craigslist jargon. I learned it off the forums I was lucky enough to accidentally stumble into.

Re: Craigslist has been disrupted

#65

Post by itgoon » Sat, Apr 02, 2011, 2:03 AM UTC

I have no problem with this.

He doesn't need to re-invest - he's the only investor (more or less). As was pointed out, there's other sites which do a better job, so if you don't like it, don't use it. Mr. Newmark and his staff are well-off with little effort. Even if they lose 90% of their revenue, we're still talking millions.

Heck, that's brilliant.

Re: Craigslist has been disrupted

#66

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 02, 2011, 2:03 AM UTC

elai wrote: post #41

Klinky wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wading through apartment listings, for example, is miserable, and there are almost no mechanisms in place to encourage that very basic information is communicated by people listing their properties. Where is a good place to look for apartments? Most "apartment search" sites that look prettier than CL usually are cluttered with a high ads to info ratio, inaccurate info and/or are slow to load/navigate...

padmapper.com gets info from craigslist and others. hotpads.com is also good.

[deleted]

Re: Craigslist has been disrupted

#67

Post by drp » Sat, Apr 02, 2011, 2:19 AM UTC

danilocampos wrote: post #23

nir wrote: post #8

>"I don't think Craig's a bad guy, but he's harvesting $50M a year into his pockets and not improving the site" Not sure about the definition of "improving the site" here. I'm thankful to CL for not building gratuitous UI, or half assed "social" element, or "tweet this post to your social graph". Instead they work on improving the content by fighting certain types of abuse, having the founder do customer support and…

The fact that they haven't done the things you describe doesn't change the fact that craigslist is a terrible product. It is clogged with spam. Clever types of spam, often ones that crowdsource their content by mining previously legit posts. Since there are no reputation mechanisms to speak of, it's far too easy to waste your time with stuff that's either spam or a scam. Meanwhile, data visualization has progressed d…

Data visualizations have progressed in almost all craigslist competitors (and mashups), but visualizations won't be the death of craigslist. The battleground is content. Sure there's plenty of spam and scams, but people love craiglist listings because there is so much unique content.

One major contributor to craiglist becoming so successful as a website is essentially the ease of posting content. That lead to lots of content and not coincidentally lots of traffic, but it also means that much of the data is unstructured. Creating more intelligent ways to interact with data requires some structure, but the easiest way to structure data is to complicate the listing creation process. When someone figures out a great balance and has enough search traffic to keep listers coming back, craigslist will have a real competitor.

Re: Craigslist has been disrupted

#68

Post by guelo » Sat, Apr 02, 2011, 2:54 AM UTC

Klinky wrote: post #37

danilocampos wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that they haven't done the things you describe doesn't change the fact that craigslist is a terrible product. It is clogged with spam. Clever types of spam, often ones that crowdsource their content by mining previously legit posts. Since there are no reputation mechanisms to speak of, it's far too easy to waste your time with stuff that's either spam or a scam. Meanwhile, data visualization has progressed d…

Wading through apartment listings, for example, is miserable, and there are almost no mechanisms in place to encourage that very basic information is communicated by people listing their properties. Where is a good place to look for apartments? Most "apartment search" sites that look prettier than CL usually are cluttered with a high ads to info ratio, inaccurate info and/or are slow to load/navigate...

I"m partial to apartmentratings.com. Most rental sites earn their money from the apartments so they are not allowed to show you any negative info, meaning no user generated content. apartmentratings.com is a pariah in the industry because they actually let real people give their opinions.

Re: Craigslist has been disrupted

#69

Post by diego » Sat, Apr 02, 2011, 3:01 AM UTC

calloc wrote: post #29

So Craigslist is supposedly being disrupted by all of these startups that are taking over various parts of what Craigslist does, and yet I don't know any of those competitors. When I am looking for something cheap, I go to Craigslist. I don't want to have to remember 10 - 20 different site names because of different categories. That in and of itself is a great plus to Craigslist. It's all there when you get to the pa…

We have remote employees that come to San Francisco for 1-4 weeks at a time. We used to find temporary places for them on Craigslist. AirBnB is much more helpful.

Re: Craigslist has been disrupted

#70

Post by tsotha » Sat, Apr 02, 2011, 3:02 AM UTC

mikiem wrote: post #46

Don't underestimate the beauty that is the cash cow.

Seriously. How many sites have gone the way of Digg, innovating their way into obscurity? If CL is still on top after all these years they're doing something right, even if that something is... nothing.