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Bye Bye Craigslist

blog.padmapper.com

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Re: Bye Bye Craigslist

#31

Post by jessriedel »

juan_juarez wrote: post #8
sh1mmer wrote: post #2

Good luck, I think it's a sign of your success that this has happened. Providing more value with their data than they do is a threat to their business.

I can't see Craigslist ever stepping up their game and providing meaningful visualization. I can't really see why CL cares about where people are reading the listings - their business model is based on selling the listings, not monetizing the viewing of them. I suspect it's out-of-control lawyers at work.

Craigslist is closer to a non-profit than a business. You can't model them as a self-interested agent.

Re: Bye Bye Craigslist

#32

Post by makmanalp »

I've used padmapper twice to get an apartment so far, and It's great! I've loved the fact that it's constantly improving and has exactly the features I need: Walkscore, bookmarking, map, proper filters. It's strictly better. To the author: I would have paid for this.

It sucks that this waas mainly an interface to craigslist, and now they're gone. I hope this gets enough critical mass that eventually so that the unusable but unexplicably popular horror that is craigslist apartments just dies an ugly death. Maybe you can even sell it to them, who knows?

All I know is while CL's response is perfectly rational, I can't help but be pissed off that I'm locked into a shitty product that is only surviving because of head start, critical mass, network effects, etc.

Edit: An alternate approach (that would admittedly not help Eric) is to open source padmapper and let people do local installs for themselves. Would be pretty hard to ban that. Although I'm not sure on the legality of scraping.

Re: Bye Bye Craigslist

#33

Post by fleitz »

Kudos to CL for standing up for user privacy. When I use CL it's with consideration of their TOS which bans these practices.

When padmapper copies the data they violate my privacy, my copyright, and the agreement between myself and craigslist as outlined in the TOS. What padmapper is doing is a violation of many data privacy laws like PIPEDA, EUDPD, and various copyright acts.

If padmapper wants the data why don't they just obtain consent from the CL posters, instead of copying it without consent.

Would the padmapper team be ok with me deciding to stick their logo where ever I deem it necessary? I bet they'd probably sue me for copyright and trademark violation.

Re: Bye Bye Craigslist

#34

Post by zach »

akoumjian wrote: post #23

First it was Carsabi and now Padmapper. While I'm not surprised, as the Craigslist ToS explicitly prohibits crawling their site, it is incredibly frustrating that the website with all the data is unwilling to innovate and unwilling to help others innovate. Craigslist will continue to be a mediocre, "good enough" solution. Since everyone associates online classifieds with craigslist, none of the other classifieds site…

Craig Newmark has often said that they innovate in response to their community. That would seem to have three effects:

- Incrementalism: faster horses instead of cars

- Suburbanism: those in the community want it to stay familiar

- Majoritarianism: outsiders, potential users, occasional users, mavericks and dreamers have little impact

Re: Bye Bye Craigslist

#35

Post by huckleberries21 »

[deleted] wrote: post #24

[deleted]

I guess people are just disappointed since Craig and Jim have often claimed to not be super focused on profit and show a disdain for general corporate greed. They always say they put users first. So when they make a decision that makes their site harder to use and send their lawyers after a one-man company, I'm surprised in a disappointed kind of way.

Re: Bye Bye Craigslist

#36

Post by ghshephard »

kenrikm wrote: post #11

Craigslist is in major need of disruption. Actually apartment finding in general sucks I can't think of a single goto place to look for apartments other then Craigslist and that just proves point #1!

I guess a lot depends on where you live - Craigslist in the Bay area is like magic for finding apartments, or a room to rent.

The Bay Area has a very advanced craigslist option, where you can sort not only by geographic area (Peninsula), you can even zoom down to a particular city. Add filtering by price and find a place to live in the Bay area has always (Since 2003) been painless for me - particularly as I don't drive, and so getting a place that is _precisely_ in the right place is important. Housingmaps provides a free map interface for those who find such a thing useful.

I don't actually know how anyone would _improve_ craigslist (for me) - I am not sure what the disruption would be - as the free service provides me 100% of what I would want from such a system.

Re: Bye Bye Craigslist

#37

Post by binaryorganic »

jamiequint wrote: post #29

This is just offensive. It would be one thing if Craigslist was doing their best to satisfy their customers and they wanted to shut down others who were scraping their site and leeching off their business. However, Craigslist puts absolutely no effort into making their product usable. The continued existence of Craigslist is just a testimony to the enormous strength of network effect lock in.

Disagree. Craig Newmark has said that he's scared to make drastic changes to the UX specifically because he doesn't know what magic recipe keeps people coming back. Do I like the CL layout? Nope. Does that mean other people should steal the content and profit from it? Probably not.

Re: Bye Bye Craigslist

#38

Post by mutant »

The pro CL comments here are ridiculous and so anti-innovation. "Don't crawl my data bro!". PM wasn't modifying the data in any way, just redis playing it on a damn map. Now CL is useless, yet again, for housing.

Re: Bye Bye Craigslist

#40

Post by refurb »

fleitz wrote: post #33

Kudos to CL for standing up for user privacy. When I use CL it's with consideration of their TOS which bans these practices. When padmapper copies the data they violate my privacy, my copyright, and the agreement between myself and craigslist as outlined in the TOS. What padmapper is doing is a violation of many data privacy laws like PIPEDA, EUDPD, and various copyright acts. If padmapper wants the data why don't th…

When you post on Craigslist, you're posting on a public forum. What expectation of privacy could you possibly have?
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