I love Craigslist, and have used it for years successfully. It is the type of tool I love using the web for - simple, functional, and document based.
All of this anti-Craigslist sentiment makes me sad.
Craigslist Suing Padmapper
321–330 of 465 posts
Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper
#322Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree! On top of that, the ability to free-ride off of other's data without permission could be seen as an attempt to stiffle innovation as well. Why should I take the time to build something when (a) others can come along and use my data for free and take away my market share or (b) I can just wait a year and scrape the data off of somebody else and not do as much work. It seems about time Craigslist re-evaluates…
why isn't craigslist doing that then instead of suing someone who found a way to attract users and media attention?
They attracted media attention? Well, why didn't you say so in the first place?
Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
But many startups do not have reasonable business plans. They have crazy business plans that everyone knows will fail, except sometimes they don't. Many startups have begun knowing they were going to be sued, knowing they were going to have legal and publicity problems. That's the nature of the disruptive business that everyone wants to be in these days.
>Many startups have begun knowing they were going to be sued Name one startup that began knowing they were going to be sued and went on to a successful exit. Parenthetically, the original Napster, the one that began knowing it would be sued, was sold about 3 years after its founding for less than $2.5 million as part of bankruptcy proceedings -- and I doubt that the owners took any significant dividends out of its be…
I never made the argument that these companies were looking for successful exits. I'm not sure how you read that into my post. I were merely saying there are some companies that are started even when the founder knows there is a very low chance of defending the company legally. This article is one such point. One that comes to mind where the founder was actively looking to be sued was the OnLive Windows competitor.
Some do it to prove a point, some do it to prove that the market exists.
Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper
#324I'm rather tired of all the sanctimonious, edgier-than-thou commenters and bloggers who keep saying CL has a "shitty UI." And that't not just because I like it (it's clean, simple, and easy to use). I totally agree that it could be improved, and maps do make it easier, but the CL interface never breaks or gets in the way the way an actual shitty UI does.
Also, I think a lot of complainers are not aware of what it takes to roll out UI design changes to hundreds of millions of users. Frankly, I'm not very knowlegeable myself, but I can stop and think about it for a second and imagine there are huge logistical issues (performance, browsers, etc.) and huge psychological issues (non-technical users, familiarity, etc.)
And then there's the whole question of whether CL's UI should be improved. There are clear benefits to having a simple UI that does not do everything for the user. When I used it to find housing near SF, I copy-pasted addresses to map them, and I did a little extra work, but I never found that CL was actually in my way. For neighborhoods and recommendations, I asked real people. When I looked for a car, I made a little spreadsheet to give weighted scores to the features I wanted--I did not go around whining that CL didn't do everything for me.
My impression is that CL wants to be a basic classified service. For whatever reason they don't want to morph into a specialized listing service, and I can understand and respect that. After all, the CL interface is not that much different from HN's.
PS: I've had this item open in my browser for maybe an hour or two--why does the Add Comment button turn into a "dead link" OMG such a shitty UI, if they won't fix it, I am justified in rehosting all the content on a better site.
Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper
#325Earlier quoted context omitted.
No. It's not their data. It's ours, as the users. Craigslist doesn't own anything I upload to them. The reason PadMapper exists is because Craigslist refuses to not suck.
"You automatically grant and assign to CL, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant and assign to CL, a perpetual, irrevocable, unlimited, fully paid, fully sub-licensable (through multiple tiers), worldwide license to copy, perform, display, distribute, prepare derivative works from (including, without limitation, incorporating into other works) and otherwise use any content that you post. You…
The grant is not exclusive and the authority to decide what is an is not authorized is not claimed by CL. If it is unauthorized they claim rights and causes. You can't have a non-exclusive grant without this distinction.
Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper
#326Earlier quoted context omitted.
The users of CL never agreed to let you copy their postings to whatever website you feel like, also it is against their TOS to do so: Any copying, aggregation, display, distribution, performance or derivative use of craigslist or any content posted on craigslist whether done directly or through intermediaries (including but not limited to by means of spiders, robots, crawlers, scrapers, framing, iframes or RSS feeds)…
The notion that I am bound by whatever legalese someone happens to put on their publicly accessible website is absurd in the extreme; I am not the one checking the box to submit a post. CL is perfectly able to restrict read-access to those who agree to the terms, e.g., by requiring registration. That they choose not to is their choice , and the state should not be used as a substitute bludgeon whenever they dislike t…
> The notion that I am bound by whatever legalese someone happens to put on their publicly accessible website is absurd in the extreme.
Well, if nothing else, the submitting users' copyright applies. CL has a license to use it however they like, you don't.
Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper
#327Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's http://kijiji.com (looks to be ebayized now). Although in Canada, http://kijiji.ca is more popular than Craigslist.
Sourceforge looked impossible to displace and yet GitHub happened. I can't wait for the same thing to happen to Craigslist.
Why was Sourceforge so tough to displace, aside from no one having the will to do it?
Craigslist controls a two-sided market. If I build a new site, I can't get buyers without there already being sellers. And vice-versa. That's an incredibly difficult business problem.
Github seems to have had it easier. I can just host my new project on github and be done with it (my website links to it after all). I'm sure sourceforge had some value just by being the go-to place, but how strong was the network effect from a developer perspective?
Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper
#328I'm rather tired of all the sanctimonious, edgier-than-thou commenters and bloggers who keep saying CL has a "shitty UI." And that't not just because I like it (it's clean, simple, and easy to use). I totally agree that it could be improved, and maps do make it easier, but the CL interface never breaks or gets in the way the way an actual shitty UI does.
Also, I think a lot of complainers are not aware of what it takes to roll out UI design changes to hundreds of millions of users. Frankly, I'm not very knowlegeable myself, but I can stop and think about it for a second and imagine there are huge logistical issues (performance, browsers, etc.) and huge psychological issues (non-technical users, familiarity, etc.)
And then there's the whole question of whether CL's UI should be improved. There are clear benefits to having a simple UI that does not do everything for the user. When I used it to find housing near SF, I copy-pasted addresses to map them, and I did a little extra work, but I never found that CL was actually in my way. For neighborhoods and recommendations, I asked real people. When I looked for a car, I made a little spreadsheet to give weighted scores to the features I wanted--I did not go around whining that CL didn't do everything for me.
My impression is that CL wants to be a basic classified service. For whatever reason they don't want to morph into a specialized listing service, and I can understand and respect that. After all, the CL interface is not that much different from HN's.
PS: I've had this item open in my browser for maybe an hour or two--why does the Add Comment button turn into a "dead link" OMG such a shitty UI, if they won't fix it, I am justified in rehosting all the content on a better site.
Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper
#329Craig Newmark said on Quora that the reason they didn't like people building stuff on top of Craigslist was simply the extra bandwidth they consumed: http://www.quora.com/Why-hasnt-anyone-built-any-products-on-... But now that 3Taps has found an ingenious way to get at the data with zero extra bandwidth cost to Craigslist (by retrieving it from the Google cache rather than CL itself), it's clear that what Craigslist…
Craigslist is a business. What makes it right for another company to profit from the contents they generated through the platform that they build?
Yes, they got an early advantage into the market and has the critical mass that many company can seem to compete with but why take that away from them because they refuse to update/add new features.
Instead of piggybacking on them and relying on their data to earn money, shouldn't Padmapper focus on building their own content. Isn't that where innovation comes from? Beating an existing company by creating a better platform?
Re: Craigslist Suing Padmapper
#330What's it like to work as Craigslist and read this stuff? How could you be excited to come to work every day knowing that network effects have carved a deep moat around a site that people describe as "an exercise in torture"?
"Yay I have job security" most likely.