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Craigslist has been disrupted

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Re: Craigslist has been disrupted

#91

Post by bostonvaulter2 »

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…

If you want better apartment searching you should really try out padmapper. They crawl craigslist and post them on a google map.

http://www.padmapper.com/

Re: Craigslist has been disrupted

#92

Post by jrockway »

guelo wrote: post #68
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...

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.

Yelp is also good. I've read the reviews for my building and they are basically correct -- the staff used to be idiots, the walls are paper-thin, and the appliances are pieces of shit. Yup, pretty much.

Re: Craigslist has been disrupted

#93

Post by danilocampos »

nir wrote: post #26
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…

Not sure if reputation mechanisms would work in a site where people often post just once, and that doesn't require creating a user account in order to post. I would love it if CL's sublet section would take some hints from AirBnB. That said, CL has a much higher volume of traffic and more pressing problems - and my experience is that ABB works great in smaller markets but is as almost bad as CL in a market like NYC.…

> Not sure if reputation mechanisms would work in a site where people often post just once, and that doesn't require creating a user account in order to post.

That's a weird premise to me. If you post an apartment, you could just as easily also want to find a girlfriend or buy a used bike or avail yourself of any of craigslist's other categories. That's their big value, after all – everything under one roof.

The fact that craigslist doesn't require a user account to post is an extremely dubious product decision at this stage.

Re: Craigslist has been disrupted

#95

Post by fdschoeneman »

I'm certainly willing to concede that Craigslist has work to do in order to beat spammers and improve the usefulness of their product. But he has one core competitive advantage over his competition that, to my mind, trumps. That core advantage? I trust Craig Newmark, and I do not trust his competitors. I like his style. And as far as Kijiji goes, I wouldn't buy a ham sandwich from Meg Whitman.

Re: Craigslist has been disrupted

#96

Post by pdaviesa »

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…

I'm not sure how you use Craigslist but I've primarily used the site to sell a few big ticket items - and it flat out works. After listing a couple of cars on some larger, more feature rich sites for several weeks without any traction, I listed on Craigslist, received multiple inquiries from day one, and sold within 10 days. Granted, this has more to do with the scale of the user base than the actual product, but I'm not sure you can completely separate those two aspects in this business space.

Re: Craigslist has been disrupted

#97

Post by pdaviesa »

bandushrew wrote: post #30

This graph: http://d2o7bfz2il9cb7.cloudfront.net/main-qimg-c18ef2d8f8bd7... is showing exactly the reason Craigslist is doing well. Each of the alternatives displayed represents a specialized, vertical solution for just one (or a couple) of the categories offered by Craigslist, There is no way that Craigslist could compete head to head with every one of them anyway, at best they could choose a couple of categories an…

You know, that's a really good point. I may go straight to StubHub if I'm really into seeing ballgames, but am I really going to remember the hot new startups focusing on apartment rentals, spa services, or used car parts? No, I'm just going to Craigslist for any of my peripheral needs.

Re: Craigslist has been disrupted

#98

Post by vaksel »

far33d wrote: post #73
vaksel wrote: post #72

craigslist won't be disrupted for the simple reason because they have a ton of traffic...UI etc, is pointless for classifieds since the only thing people care about is whether or not the service has buyers/sellers for the things they want...and Craigslist has that in spades. i.e. I recently listed a car for sale on craigslist...listed it on Friday evening and got 8 interested people in a few hours, and it sold the ne…

I'm sure there's someone who said that about newspaper classifieds once too.

newspaper classifieds didn't have the traffic in a single location

Re: Craigslist has been disrupted

#99

Post by ricarr »

danilocampos wrote: post #93
nir wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if reputation mechanisms would work in a site where people often post just once, and that doesn't require creating a user account in order to post. I would love it if CL's sublet section would take some hints from AirBnB. That said, CL has a much higher volume of traffic and more pressing problems - and my experience is that ABB works great in smaller markets but is as almost bad as CL in a market like NYC.…

> Not sure if reputation mechanisms would work in a site where people often post just once, and that doesn't require creating a user account in order to post. That's a weird premise to me. If you post an apartment, you could just as easily also want to find a girlfriend or buy a used bike or avail yourself of any of craigslist's other categories. That's their big value, after all – everything under one roof. The fact…

"The fact that craigslist doesn't require a user account to post is an extremely dubious product decision at this stage."

I can see your point of view, but this user likes the use and forget it aspect of CL.

Further, typically (for me at least) all CL initiated interactions -- mainly apts. and job related for me -- are all in person, and so far have presented no issues.

Obviously anything can be improved, but the modality of interaction with CL very much defines CL and (imo) is a major factor contributing to its popularity.

As a programmer, CL is entirely unlike what I (astronaut) would have developed. That's another aspect that attracts me to the site. A quite effective counter argument to my approach to designing software. Simple, and practical.

Would you believe it has contributed to my rethinking my approach to software design in context of mass utility services?

Re: Craigslist has been disrupted

#100

Post by ricarr »

bradleyjoyce wrote: post #25
rhizome wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Craigslist runs something like 50MM ads every month without a leak of personal information and a user-driven moderation system, all the while fending off myriad abusers for whom free (or nearly free) advertising isn't enough and think Craigslist should be their personal global spam shitbucket. When the only thing people have to criticize you for is your appearance, I think that says a lot.

Craigslist is so full of spam and reposts it's practically useless for major categories. Take for example Dallas apartments/rentals... hardly a single legitimate posting in there. There is A LOT more to complain about than appearance.

Perhaps the issue is the user community in Dallas. One interesting thing about CL is that it is a sort of mirror of the local community ...
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