Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Craigslist has been disrupted

quora.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 132 posts

Re: Craigslist has been disrupted

#81

Post by sliverstorm »

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…

Just use an RSS reader and do some data processing. It's a small price to pay when the content (listings) come free. I think we begin to take that for granted, and start to get upset when our free cake isn't ALSO 6 tiers and made of exotic Swiss chocolates.

Sure, a tool that requires skillful end-users isn't one destined for great things and world domination (example: emacs) but that doesn't mean it has no value.

Re: Craigslist has been disrupted

#82

Post by nicelios »

Despite these disruptions, the company is unparalleled from a profit-per-employee perspective. Craiglist's network effect may have reached its limit, but the company will continue to make huge profits. They clearly favor maintenance over product development, but that doesn't diminish their status as a profit-per-employee anomaly.

Re: Craigslist has been disrupted

#83

Post by d2 »

The graph is US traffic only and they peaked at 16.6% of the entire US population visiting the site once a month. Google called this the "law of large numbers" in 2006 when they predicted a slowing in their growth and Microsoft did the same a long time ago when they hit saturation.

The drop is only during the last 6 months, is less than 10% and could be a variety of factors including a stats gathering quirk, recession, etc.

Re: Craigslist has been disrupted

#84

Post by originalgeek »

intended wrote: post #80
originalgeek wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Could you provide a link to the forum in case anyone else needs to figure it out? (assuming that the forum was useful)

Click on Help and then click Help Desk at the bottom of the Help page. You have to be logged in. The discussions about ghosting are ongoing every 24 hours, someone usually posts a link to the "good" post that helps you out of the situation. But it's not guaranteed.

Re: Craigslist has been disrupted

#86

Post by potatolicious »

rhizome wrote: post #16
georgieporgie wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure about the definition of "improving the site" here. How about some sort of reputation system? And decent moderation? As it stands, CL is a great way to (not) meet flaky people, and to have your posts taken down on the indecipherable whims of a few obsessive users. I've gotten one job, bought a few things, sold one motorcycle, and gave away most of my possessions via CL, and it was consistently an awful, frust…

It always takes more than "a few obsessive users," and there is a flag help forum on Craigslist to help explain how your ad might have trammeled your area's standards.

Having had an ad inexplicably flagged, the flag help forum is no help at all, unless you consider random, uninformed speculation a form of help.

For one thing, the tone of the flag help forum is that of a hazing circle. It's just a lot of people sitting around being snarky, making rude comments at relative novices and calling them names.

Which might be easier to swallow if they actually provided any real help - but unless your post is bog-standard flag-bait the advice given is usually off the mark. I sat through a number of threads besides my own and it seems like the user base is 50% there to flog newbies, and 50% there to make wrong statements.

Personally, I was looking for collaborative help in a photography project, and posted to gigs - but according to the great wisdom to flag-help I really should've been posting to services-creative instead (???)

The problem here is also that there is no safeguard against other posters flagging each other's content. Using the flag feature to push competing postings off the page is depressingly common, and the there is neither accountability nor reliability in the flags themselves.

Re: Craigslist has been disrupted

#87

Post by nettdata »

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…

Yeah, it's so bad that everyone uses it and it's making $50m a year.

I wish I had a shitty product like that.

And I even use it regularly to find stuff I want, locally, and cheap. The bastards.

Re: Craigslist has been disrupted

#88

Post by mise »

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…

Perhaps I'm seeing it too much from the perspective of the little guy, but harvesting that much money into your own pockets over a number of years may not be such a bad decision.

Re: Craigslist has been disrupted

#89

Post by necubi »

dpcan wrote: post #10

Craigslist is the most UNBROKEN site on the web. It works flawlessly. Just yesterday I bought a cell phone from a local guy on Craigslist. Scrolled down the page. Found the phone I wanted in the city I wanted for the price I wanted. Called him, met at a restaurant, paid for the phone, and we went on our way. It was perfect.

I've been trying to find summer housing on craigslist, and it's been mostly a failure. The biggest issue is the lack of semantic information in the listings. For example, every listing has a price, but it's mostly useless for filtering because some people list per day, some per week and some per month. There is also no place for listers to put the dates of availability (crucial information for temporary housing) except within the text itself.

Providing richer semantic information would alleviate many of the issues, but the very structure (taken directly from newspaper classifieds) seems unsuited to the web. In particular, why must people re-post every day in order to be seen? Why can't they have a single post which they can keep current and remove when it's been taken?

There are dozens obvious improvements, which could maintain the flavor while vastly improving the experience. Unfortunately, Craigslist still seems like the last word in the housing market, but hopefully that will change soon.

Re: Craigslist has been disrupted

#90

Post by Klinky »

danilocampos wrote: post #52
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...

A nit to pick, since elai has already provided some good examples. > Most "apartment search" sites that look prettier... None of these gripes are about appearance except inasmuch as appearance reflects functionality. craigslist is ugly, but that's not the problem. craigslist doesn't work well . I don't want it to look different. I want it to work differently. A competing site could look much prettier than craigslist…

It sounds like you want CL to specialize in a niche, which is something they're not really setup to do, nor is it their claim to fame. They are a firehouse of classifieds information, that's why a lot of people like them.

They could mine the data they have a bit more, but where do they stop? Should they let you select computers for sale by CPU type(newegg)? Cars by model/make/warrant/color(autotrader.com)? Dates by body measurements/race/religion/compatibility questions(okcupid.com)? Should their forums have a karma system(hacker news)? There is a reason they are called "Craig's List" & not "Craig's Apartments", "Craig's Cars", "Craig's Dating" or "Craig's Computers".

Perhaps they should try harder on the spam, but redesigning how they operate could alienate a considerable portion of their community who like the simplicity & popularity of the site.

Post reply on HN