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Why the Web Hasn't Birthed a Prettier Craigslist

mashable.com

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Re: Why the Web Hasn't Birthed a Prettier Craigslist

#21

Post by ig1 »

rm999 wrote: post #9

I've long considered CL one of the biggest tragedies of the internet age. The problem is it's just good enough to prevent competitors from gaining critical mass, but it's not good enough to consistently do an adequate job. There's a huge pent-up demand for what CL provides, including local person-to-person commerce, sublets, apartment hunting, job hunting etc. I probably use CL about 2-3 times a year, and I end up re…

The article misses the point of specialist companies competing with subsections of CL. It's not just what's happening to CL, it's what's happening to every dominant classified site around the world.

Classified sites used to be the dominant player in all of the markets they covered, but the profitable ones (housing, dating, jobs, etc.) have been taken over by companies specializing in those sectors leaving the classified sites with mostly the dregs of the market.

Sure some people might use CL for jobs and dating, but by and large those are the people who don't want to pay. Which is why CL's annual revenue is less than what sites like Monster and Match.com make in a few months.

Re: Why the Web Hasn't Birthed a Prettier Craigslist

#22

Post by vyrotek »

revorad wrote: post #18
vyrotek wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't take a part of the transaction since they all happen in-person with cash. Not sure about Yardsale. None of the people around here knew about it. There's definitely a chicken & egg problem in this space. But I could see these things spread through small communities first. I had hundreds of registered users in a couple of weeks from Utah and watched it spread to Idaho and Arizona pretty quickly.

You can't take a part of the transaction since they all happen in-person with cash. Ebay proves otherwise.

Well, eBay allows people to sell things to each other across the world/country which solves a different problem. Most of the people selling things on classifieds have no interest in having to go to the post office to ship your item and deal with paypal or something to get money. The items on these yardsale groups sell within minutes and someone comes to your door with cash in hand and the item is gone. People really like and trust the community aspect of selling things this way.

Re: Why the Web Hasn't Birthed a Prettier Craigslist

#23

Post by robomartin »

One nice thing about CL: They get out of the way.

I haven't sold anything on eBay in probably two years because they are (or can be and have been) down-right horrible to sellers. Imagine having your entire Paypal account embargoed for a month because some guy complained about shipping costs. And this after having fifteen opportunities to NOT bid, each of which --and the listing-- clearly disclosed shipping costs.

On CL you get back to a truer buyer-seller relationship. If you don't have social problems (meaning you actually like engaging with people in person) CL is fantastic. I like shaking someone's hand after closing a win-win deal.

Yes, the CL site sucks. Obviously utility trumps design by a longshot. I love nice design but I always remind myself of CL when stressing over "pixel perfect design" (a tendency I have). people don't use a service because they are in awe of the design, they use it because of what they get out of it.

Re: Why the Web Hasn't Birthed a Prettier Craigslist

#24

Post by antirez »

There is worse than that. In Italy several companies tried to establish as the "Italian Craigslist", using a lot of money too, and nobody succeeded so we have a fragmentation of small sites but no one is really used enough, updated enough, ... basically is all useless outdated stuff.

Re: Why the Web Hasn't Birthed a Prettier Craigslist

#25

Post by scarecrowbob »

crazygringo wrote: post #14
arbitrage wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your opinion, what job is it that CL fails to address adequately in a consistent fashion? Ignore the real identity / account reputation issue, which nobody has managed to solve in an adequate fashion. What is it that CL promises, that it fails to follow through on?

Um, OK. How about the fact that apartment listings in NYC are basically 95% spam, with brokers advertising apartments that don't exist, to pull a bait and switch when you call -- including on the specifically non-broker pages? Searching by price is broken (look for $500 listings and it will return $500 daily, $500 weekly, $500 monthly, all mixed up together). Searching by neighborhood is broken, since it relies on ke…

"(I understand it's better outside of NYC, but since NYC is the largest city in the US, that doesn't really matter.)"

I always think it's funny that the most cosmopolitan cities can breed the most parochial attitudes.

Re: Why the Web Hasn't Birthed a Prettier Craigslist

#26

Post by saryant »

crazygringo wrote: post #14
arbitrage wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your opinion, what job is it that CL fails to address adequately in a consistent fashion? Ignore the real identity / account reputation issue, which nobody has managed to solve in an adequate fashion. What is it that CL promises, that it fails to follow through on?

Um, OK. How about the fact that apartment listings in NYC are basically 95% spam, with brokers advertising apartments that don't exist, to pull a bait and switch when you call -- including on the specifically non-broker pages? Searching by price is broken (look for $500 listings and it will return $500 daily, $500 weekly, $500 monthly, all mixed up together). Searching by neighborhood is broken, since it relies on ke…

I've been dealing with this for the last few weeks. It's not just NYC that suffers from this problem, I've been apartment hunting on CL in San Antonio and it's all spam.

I've been thinking about writing a short script to filter listings by phone number—that seems to be the common element between brokerage listings.

Re: Why the Web Hasn't Birthed a Prettier Craigslist

#27

Post by revorad »

vyrotek wrote: post #22
revorad wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't take a part of the transaction since they all happen in-person with cash. Ebay proves otherwise.

Well, eBay allows people to sell things to each other across the world/country which solves a different problem. Most of the people selling things on classifieds have no interest in having to go to the post office to ship your item and deal with paypal or something to get money. The items on these yardsale groups sell within minutes and someone comes to your door with cash in hand and the item is gone. People really…

Plenty of people buy and sell on ebay within small local communities with a pickup only option. The trust factor comes from being in the same community and doing at least one good transaction. The mode of payment has nothing to do with it. In fact, it would be better if you didn't have to deal with cash.

Just because things have been done in a certain way doesn't mean they can't be done better.

Re: Why the Web Hasn't Birthed a Prettier Craigslist

#28

Post by [deleted] »

robomartin wrote: post #23

One nice thing about CL: They get out of the way. I haven't sold anything on eBay in probably two years because they are (or can be and have been) down-right horrible to sellers. Imagine having your entire Paypal account embargoed for a month because some guy complained about shipping costs. And this after having fifteen opportunities to NOT bid, each of which --and the listing-- clearly disclosed shipping costs. On…

[deleted]

Re: Why the Web Hasn't Birthed a Prettier Craigslist

#29

Post by rgbrgb »

hartator wrote: post #17

I think this article miss an important point, Craiglist does the job. It's not fancy and the content is poorly written and it's the reason why people want to post to it. They don't want to understand a new system with reputation or painful other features, you just take your add, throw 2/3 lines, a dirty picture and it's done. There is scam but in the other it's easy to post or to reply, it's about free market and res…

Here's one example:

If I'm looking for an apartment close to work, I'd much rather pull up a map centered on my workplace and see the listings on the map. That's what padmapper (https://www.padmapper.com/) was allowing me to do. With the unchanging Craigslist, I choose a neighborhood (which could be huge and I could be on the border of) and hunt through a long list, clicking on every post to check where it really is.

It would definitely be nice if it was a bit prettier but there are usability issues that they don't address (and prevent others from addressing) because they have a monopoly on a certain network.

Re: Why the Web Hasn't Birthed a Prettier Craigslist

#30

Post by wes-exp »

rm999 wrote: post #9

I've long considered CL one of the biggest tragedies of the internet age. The problem is it's just good enough to prevent competitors from gaining critical mass, but it's not good enough to consistently do an adequate job. There's a huge pent-up demand for what CL provides, including local person-to-person commerce, sublets, apartment hunting, job hunting etc. I probably use CL about 2-3 times a year, and I end up re…

Agreed. Craigslist masquerades as some kind of pseudo non-profit (".org") like it's doing the world a favor being a barebones piece of crap. But the reality is that it's an entrenched monopoly squatting on a huge piece of economic land and letting it languish. There are so many features and services that could be useful in this space that just aren't getting created.

I sincerely hope that the courts demolish craigslist's attempts to block smaller players from creating actual utility in the classifieds market.

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