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Craigslist blocks Yahoo Pipes

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Re: Craigslist blocks Yahoo Pipes

#21

Post by Kaizyn »

jimboyoungblood wrote: post #19
jeremymims wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's broken because the people who go out of their way to create software for craigslist aren't largely duplicating functionality. Want a map view so you can see all the relevant listings in one view? Want craigslist to deliberately filter the same text or picture used for different listed apartments or jobs so you don't waste your time or get scammed? Want to search by squarefoot or by actual bedrooms or by picture?…

It just means there's a huge opportunity to build a great craigslist competitor by building a service that has all these features.

Have you ever heard of the network effect? Craigslist has such a lock on its market that you would have to have something extremely compelling to dislodge them. A few flashy maps and a web 2.0ish appearance wouldn't be nearly enough to do it.

Re: Craigslist blocks Yahoo Pipes

#22

Post by jeremymims »

forkandwait wrote: post #13
jeremymims wrote: post #7

For the life of me, I can't understand why craigslist has had this mentality. I basically have to chalk it up to Craig being stubborn. He was burned by ebay grabbing 20%, he hasn't changed the design ever, and may constantly live in fear of being co-opted by the man. But like it or not, Craigslist is the man. And when your users go out of their way to create pieces of software that actually improve the experience for…

"For the life of me, I can't understand why craigslist has had this mentality." You mean the mentality that has created one of the top five websites ever? I mean EVER? ... Oh, that poor Craig, silly idealistic fellow...

No, not the mentality that created a large website. The mentality that keeps people from creating ways to view the data that benefit the website's users. Craigslist won the market. Now it's time to open up.

If craigslist were solely out to monetize this website, that'd be fine. But they don't. They keep some things free and Craig has made a big deal about making money in the categories that needed a charge to prevent spamming. So there's a disconnect between a guy who wants to fight the "man" and someone who clearly just went out of his way to squash a bunch of little ones.

The correct moves in this situation for a top five website are:

- build the feature yourself. It sucks for the little guy who made his website but your users get the benefits anyway.

- don't build the feature because this feature is trivial and your users don't want it anyway. So this external website languishes and provides no benefit and no harm.

- buy the feature. Buy the company for a little money and implement the feature. The top 5 websites do this all the time. As an added bonus, you can acquire this talent who can create lots of great features for your users.

- hire the guys who made the feature and ask them to build it for you. They'd probably leap at the chance.

- Give the external website your blessing. Invest a little money in them so that if they strike it big you'll benefit.

- Make them pay a data access fee. Charge them per query.

Any of these would have been better options. This would be how a top five company should behave.

Re: Craigslist blocks Yahoo Pipes

#24

Post by jeremymims »

misuba wrote: post #15
maurycy wrote: post #8

Sorry to say but company that treats developers like dirt is doomed.

Craigslist has continued to thrive over at least ten years of neglect and hostility towards developers as well as interaction design. They seem to disprove your claim.

I think a big part of this is the misattribution of the .org label combined with overly simple design. People believe that craigslist is altruistic and trustworthy because it has given the appearance that it can only just keep the lights on and pay the bills. A real company could afford a logo designer!

So they've gotten huge (not in number of employees), but they're behaving just as arrogantly.

Re: Craigslist blocks Yahoo Pipes

#25

Post by alaskamiller »

forkandwait wrote: post #12
jacoblyles wrote: post #6

It hurts me when people chose to keep things broken (Craigslist) for irrational reasons, especially when it wastes hours of time for millions of people.

It seems to me that Craig is trying to balance making CL wide-openly available to individual people while preventing a business ecology from growing on top of it. He is all for the latter, and really hates the former. In contrast EBay thrives on the business ecology it has created. (But then I think Craig is a socialist at heart -- and bless him for it!) So, while I am sorry that a bunch of cool hacks got shut down,…

I think you mean he's for the former and against the latter.

But the sentence is moot since you already stated the facts previously.

Re: Craigslist blocks Yahoo Pipes

#26

Post by [deleted] »

Kaizyn wrote: post #21
jimboyoungblood wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It just means there's a huge opportunity to build a great craigslist competitor by building a service that has all these features.

Have you ever heard of the network effect? Craigslist has such a lock on its market that you would have to have something extremely compelling to dislodge them. A few flashy maps and a web 2.0ish appearance wouldn't be nearly enough to do it.

[deleted]

Re: Craigslist blocks Yahoo Pipes

#27

Post by slay2k »

rms wrote: post #5
slay2k wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Craig Newmark: "as a rule of thumb, okay to use RSS feeds for noncommercial purposes." What's predictable here ?

Predictable is that craigslist seems to have some vendetta against external web apps, and you showed them a big data hole they had. I'd ask Craig again on Twitter about the Pipes thing, he's better at responding to tweets than emails sometimes. http://twitter.com/craignewmark

Not today he isn't, asked him 3 hours ago, no response.

Re: Craigslist blocks Yahoo Pipes

#28

Post by jeremymims »

MartinCron wrote: post #20
jeremymims wrote: post #7

For the life of me, I can't understand why craigslist has had this mentality. I basically have to chalk it up to Craig being stubborn. He was burned by ebay grabbing 20%, he hasn't changed the design ever, and may constantly live in fear of being co-opted by the man. But like it or not, Craigslist is the man. And when your users go out of their way to create pieces of software that actually improve the experience for…

This is total conjecture on my part, but part of this mentality might lie in the fact that Craigslist is user-moderated. You shouldn't be circumventing the duplicate, spam, and misleading entries (which helps only you) you should be seeing and flagging them for removal (which helps everyone). I like to think that Craigslist isn't free, I just pay for it with my time and attention by flagging the junk that doesn't bel…

That's an interesting point but that still doesn't explain why he would be against someone else doing it another way.

Craig very famously types the command "sweep the leg" (a Karate Kid reference) to remove spam. Maybe it's the same command for small projects based on the service. :-)

Re: Craigslist blocks Yahoo Pipes

#29

Post by jimboyoungblood »

eli wrote: post #18
jimboyoungblood wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Craigslist nets tens of millions in profits each year, most of which I would assume ends up eventually in Craig Newmark and Jim Buckmaster's personal bank accounts. I would guess they are operating under the principle of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"

You honestly think they're in it for the money?

What sounds like a more likely explanation for them blocking yahoo pipes? 1) They make a lot of money and want to continue doing so, and feel threatened by third party services that disintermediate them. 2) Craig is "strange" 3) Craig is "evil"

There are of course other possible explanations: 4) Craigslist RSS server runs on a Pentium w/ 256MB of memory and can't scale 5) Someone at Yahoo stole Craig's girlfriend so he hates them.

Any others?

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