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Bye Bye Craigslist

blog.padmapper.com

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Re: Bye Bye Craigslist

#91

Post by samstave »

binaryorganic wrote: post #37
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.

What utter bs - padmapper is not "stealing" anything - padmapper is the best method of viewing cl housing listings there is.

I berated Craig over on Quora about this a while back - to say that he doesn't want to break it is bullshit - he is scared and lazy to better the site through even the smallest of updates.

The fact that "this posting has been deleted by its author" and "this post has been flagged for removal" still show up in results is down right infuriating.

Providing simply no way to browse items by picture is also laughable.

The content on CL is what is valuable, and Craig has been rumored to make 25 million per year off the site, and he doesn't want to muck with it because he doesn't want to hurt that income - but while doing so, he is keeping the content locked up in an abhorrent UX.

Re: Bye Bye Craigslist

#93

Post by cgag »

makeramen wrote: post #44

Carsabi (YC W12) was also affected by this recently. Especially annoying midway through my car search. It is really disappointing that Craiglist won't license their data.

I'm kind of surprised that a company based around scraping CL would get into YC. I know a lot of people do it, but it wasn't exactly unknown that it was against craigslist's TOS.

Re: Bye Bye Craigslist

#94

Post by cgag »

makeramen wrote: post #44

Carsabi (YC W12) was also affected by this recently. Especially annoying midway through my car search. It is really disappointing that Craiglist won't license their data.

I'm kind of surprised that a company based around scraping CL would get into YC. I know a lot of people do it, but it wasn't exactly unknown that it was against craigslist's TOS.

Re: Bye Bye Craigslist

#95

Post by aheilbut »

jamiequint wrote: post #71
markerdmann wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't discount the speed. Every Craigslist page loads and renders very quickly. The simple, text-only UI helps keep it fast, and that matters.

While the pageload speed may be faster the total speed to find what I'm looking for is drastically slower due to the fact that the interface sucks.

Which paradoxically, seems to be an advantage, because it puts people in a feedback loop where they stay on the site, and every new search provides a tiny bit of reinforcement that builds the habit.

Re: Bye Bye Craigslist

#96

Post by washedup »

readme wrote: post #82

I am totally upset. I wanted to use padmapper to search for an apartment for my next move. I had been looking with it for months and wow it was super helpful. Please, make a client-side solution so they can't shut you off! A browser based plugin, for example that allows us to plot the listings on our end. I wrote this email to craigslist: Hi Craig and Jim, I am very upset that you cut off padmapper. Using padmapper c…

Great email... I will follow suit. They cut off the listings right in the middle of a search and it took me a little while to figure out what happened.

Re: Bye Bye Craigslist

#97

Post by legutierr »

blackysky wrote: post #67

At the end of the day it is Craigslist's data. I know padmapper was useful for a lot of people so the next smart move is to build your own data. A "craiglist" focus on rental only with the same features. The sad reality is you need your own platform to scale any type of services like that.Is it going to be easy and fast to build. The answer is no. However the reward and opportunity are huge.... Of course it would be…

Well, it's Craigslist's data, but it's also the advertisers' data. If I were to advertise an apartment I owned, I would rather put it on Padmapper than on Craigslist, if only Padmapper had the critical mass.

But maybe that's what Craigslist is worried about. I'll tell you one thing, though, if Padmapper wasn't competing with Craigslist before today, it certainly is now.

Re: Bye Bye Craigslist

#98

Post by Mc_Big_G »

This is the whole reason I started foreverlist.com. Besides better/more photos, geolocation, comments, etc..., I always wanted to open up the api and let anyone develop on top of it. Alas, competing with craigslist is folly. I regret cloning the design of CL, but the logic was that it would be simple for people to use.

I absolutely LOVE pad mapper and hate craigslist even more now. Many good sites have been killed off by craigslist.

[edit spelling]

Re: Bye Bye Craigslist

#99

Post by moreorless »

jamiequint wrote: post #50
binaryorganic wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The magic recipe that keeps people coming back is that Craigslist has a large network. I would be willing to bet a large amount of money that adding a map to search results and letting me put an upper limit on the number of bedrooms I'm looking for would not make people less likely to use Craigslist.

> I would be willing to bet a large amount of money that adding a map to search results and letting me put an upper limit on the number of bedrooms I'm looking for would not make people less likely to use Craigslist.

So when can we expect to see your show HN: Craiglist done right?

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