Craigslist needs to be stopped. This is the third incredibly useful service I've seen shutdown in as many weeks. I was heartbroken when Carsabi had to stop indexing Craigslist a couple weeks ago.
Bye Bye Craigslist
291–300 of 312 posts
Re: Bye Bye Craigslist
#292How about all the ipad apps that access craigslist data? how do they get away with that???
Re: Bye Bye Craigslist
#293CL is obviously in their full rights to do so, but I really wish they could have waited a couple weeks before they did it. I'm moving to another state this Tuesday and PM is especially helpful when you don't know the neighborhoods.
Re: Bye Bye Craigslist
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
I for one, commend Craigslist for their commitment to maintaining a strict, consistent, well-defined UI and moreover, for choosing to maintain a relatively modest operation to the benefit of their core users instead of succumbing to the promises of riches that so often end up ruining great services created by the Tech Community. Many of you are saying this is detrimental to consumers, and it may be in the short term,…
Great thoughts. Is > $100 million annual revenue really "relatively modest" though?
Well considering they are the 9th most visited site in the US and the companies ahead of it are all making revenues in the Billions (except Wikipedia and Twitter), then, ridiculously enough, $100 million sounds pretty modest.
Re: Bye Bye Craigslist
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because you're optimizing for engagement by measuring time on site or something like that Oh good, nobody actually told you how they measured but you already know! Bravo.
I can tell you from first-hand experience that they know what they're doing. They measure almost everything, nicely put together in dashboards with all the KPI's for the appropriate managers. I think it's unlikely they used a suboptimal performance indicator to judge the site's new design, and would say the same thing about craigslist.
If only they would measure amount of spam in their for rent listing that currently nearly useless.
Re: Bye Bye Craigslist
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yup, there's a catch-22 here: when your site has shitty usability but is the only source of information, people hit more pages and spend more time there. When you fix your UI mistakes, they're in and out quicker because they actually get what they need efficiently. Because you're optimizing for engagement by measuring time on site or something like that, you end up making sure never to make your site easy to use. Thi…
Haha, I see what you did there. You confused UI with Usability. Craigslist is incredibly usable. Have you taken a look at Ebay lately? Does it look familiar? That's cos it hasn't significantly changed in 10 years. Is that because they don't care? Nope, it's because gradients and drop shadows make your product look better, but don't make it more usable. Craigslist is a utility, not a website. They care about keeping i…
You can't view apartment search results on a fucking map.
Are you really going to argue that the site is more usable without that very basic feature?
Re: Bye Bye Craigslist
#297Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yup, there's a catch-22 here: when your site has shitty usability but is the only source of information, people hit more pages and spend more time there. When you fix your UI mistakes, they're in and out quicker because they actually get what they need efficiently. Because you're optimizing for engagement by measuring time on site or something like that, you end up making sure never to make your site easy to use. Thi…
Haha, I see what you did there. You confused UI with Usability. Craigslist is incredibly usable. Have you taken a look at Ebay lately? Does it look familiar? That's cos it hasn't significantly changed in 10 years. Is that because they don't care? Nope, it's because gradients and drop shadows make your product look better, but don't make it more usable. Craigslist is a utility, not a website. They care about keeping i…
Just because the site is simple in design, doesn't mean that it is built to be used efficiently. Craigslist, as is, is a usability nightmare. When I use the site, I am using it with various Greasemonkey scripts, Firefox extensions and 3rd party web apps to make their content easier to consume/see/understand/filter. These tools are the only reason that I can bare to use Craigslist.
If I am searching for a bike, a simple script to show image thumbnails by every listing will let me see which listings interest me. This saves me time, because now I only have to open a few interesting links. I don't have to scour through many of text links, just to see if they interest me.
The rentals section is constantly bombarded by spam and has very few filtering options. There is no way to exclude keywords. Boolean operators would greatly improve the usability of the site.
Re: Bye Bye Craigslist
#298Sometimes people seem to forget that the most frequent users of Craigslist, and the ones that keep it popular, are not complaining about it having bad UX. We are.
I want PadMapper to succeed (it helped me find a place super-quick for grad school in the fall), but Craigslist has every right to legislate their content. We'll see what they do/don't do about it.
Re: Bye Bye Craigslist
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
They also don't have an API, and they also don't allow you to pay for a license or API for websites.
Do you have anything you're unwilling to sell? And if so is it cool if I just take it?
What about if instead of taking it I take a picture with my "3D camera" and then have my "3D printer" create one.
Am I still stealing it?
Re: Bye Bye Craigslist
#300Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah but that still sucks, because people rarely know which neighborhood they are in. With padmapper, I could see exactly what was where and not have to worry about somebody thinking excelsior is somehow the mission, and the price per room/cats and dogs/walk score/etc... extras are amazing and integrated, especially if you don't know an area. I guess you haven't really used padmapper if you don't understand how anyon…
>> Yeah but that still sucks, because people rarely know which neighborhood they are in. "rarely" is a tough word. I have found the city to be pretty well demarcated unless you are talking about people confused about minor issues such as what counts as Lower Haight and what counts as Upper Haight. >> I guess you haven't really used padmapper if you don't understand how anyone could improve craigslist for you. I used…
In Boston, every listing is contaminated with mentions of every single nearby neighborhood to take advantage of Craigslist's comically broken search functionality. Search "back bay", and you end up with listings in Somerville, since it's "NEAR BACK BAY SOUTH END CAMBRIDGE BROOKLINE" etc etc etc.
Apartment hunting on Craigslist is a total nightmare without Padmapper, and I'm resenting Craigslist more and more for relegating us all to using their horrible UI.