21–26 of 26 posts
Why such articles are never written by people who have built something bigger or better than what they complain about?
Craig Newmark reminds me a little of Markus Frind. Each comes across as not being interested in building their business beyond their huge initial success. However un-motivated they appear to be, change happens and they still manage to change the online world by simply not doing things that most people think they should be doing (like this joker)
Craig on the other hand, is an American hero.
They need an API, badly. Very dumb of them not to have one already. It would be a huge value add to their service. I don't know what's the problem. Either they dont have the technical resources (unlikely), or they've made a conscience decision not to provide one. I think the biggest problem with Craigslist is they seem like they don't give a shit about their own site. May or may not be true, but it's definitely the p…
The only thing I could imagine an API being used for would be to allow postings from software outside of craigslist. You want to know what 99% of people would use it for? Spamming Craigslist.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed, there's nothing lucky about the success of Craigslist. It's amazing they've been able to be online and out compete for over a dozen years now.
There is definitely something lucky about Craigslist. There is an element of luck in everything and CL was the right product at the right time. You could build a better product right now and it wouldn't beat CL because the timing isn't right.
Craigslist is successful because it's awesome. The author of this article complains about the "lack of any sophistication in the search" - well thanks to their dead-simple and very functional search available as an RSS feed, I always know instantly when something I'm looking for is locally available in my city. absence of any form of user reputation - who cares when you are dealing locally, in cash? the unavailabilit…
They need an API, badly. Very dumb of them not to have one already. It would be a huge value add to their service. I don't know what's the problem. Either they dont have the technical resources (unlikely), or they've made a conscience decision not to provide one. I think the biggest problem with Craigslist is they seem like they don't give a shit about their own site. May or may not be true, but it's definitely the p…
Craiglist is a text-only site. What on earth would you do with an API? You can access everything on the site using RSS feeds. People have done many creative things with those feeds: Google maps mashups which display apartment listings on top of crime maps, for example. The only thing I could imagine an API being used for would be to allow postings from software outside of craigslist. You want to know what 99% of peop…
Screen scraping craigslist is easy, and I don't mind it at all. Only problem is the fact that if you happen to become successful, they'll shut you down, so there's much of a point.