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Bye Bye Craigslist

blog.padmapper.com

301–310 of 312 posts

Re: Bye Bye Craigslist

#301
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On what grounds, exactly? They have every right to deny you access to theirs servers.

They have every right to implement technical barriers to scraping. Whether they can invoke the law to establish a legal barrier to re-publishing their proprietary-but-public facts -- not even the apartment summary text, just extracted metadata -- is not at all clear. When an auction aggregator was sued by eBay for doing something similar, the judgment in eBay's favor rested on the fact that the aggregator was posing…

I think you may be confusing two issues.

It's almost certainly true that they could republish the data without violating any law. That has nothing to do with whether they have the right to scrape the data from the website.

IE do not confuse their right to republish the data with the right to get it from a particular source in a particular way.

The line of cases you are citing is also about trespass to chattels, which is a pretty bad claim to make about website scraping (for the reasons the california supreme court set out in Intel vs Hamidi). It was mainly used back in the days when courts barely knew what websites were. Trespass to chattels may still get used when you can show actual harm caused by the scraping, but most claims nowadays would be around terms of use violations, which are a much more grey area (some courts have gone for it, some not).

Re: Bye Bye Craigslist

#302
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Network effect. Sellers go to CL because that's where the buyers are, and buyers go to CL because that's where the sellers are. Other features come in play after that. Once the network effect sets in it's almost impossible to unseat the incumbent: eBay, Linked-in, Facebook, Craigslist, etc. The dominant company has 90%+ share, and can stay that way forever doing very little. eBay, for example, hasn't changed its (rat…

I think there's more to it than that. I know people for whom craigslist is one of the very few websites they interact with. It's a very different demographic from the one that hangs on HN. I think this is a big factor in the CL design and the reluctance to change it. I also think the network effect is being overstated in this instance. eBay has much stronger lock-in because I can't list my item in more than one aucti…

I think CL works because to most end users, it's really no different than newspaper classifieds. Classified users expect to have to wade through a bunch of useless stuff to find the diamonds in the rough.

Re: Bye Bye Craigslist

#305

Craigslist is an evil monopolist that literally wastes millions of hours of its users time every year through the enforcement of shitty UI (if the amount of money that I save using padmapper is typical). They get a good reputation for some bizarre reason because their CEO is an anti-capitalist, but they are still evil for holding back innovation. A human lifetime is about 700,000 hours. Craigslist is the moral equiva…

For those who use Chrome web browser, there's some fixes by way of extension that really help save time on CL... My favorite: http://www.craigslistextension.com/

Re: Bye Bye Craigslist

#306

Just read the entire thread, got to be one of the most sock-puppet, straw-manned, astro-turfed, meat-puppeted mess of self serving wanna be entreprenuer whining ever. CL is successful, get over it.

You're absolutely correct.

Re: Bye Bye Craigslist

#307
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your argument is "Since they are not doing everything they can with their content, I can steal it"?

What a silly analogy. If I have a car and you steal it from me, you now have a car and I don't. What PadMapper does is it takes a picture of my car and shows/sells it to people. Analogies require handling with care :-)

Please note that there was no analogy in my original comment. I was merely summing up the OP's argument. Additionally, as someone who has plans to write a craigslist-centric app, and took the time to read the TOS, I find it idiotic for a developer to charge ahead with creating an app/site without either understanding the terms, or obeying them.

What's more is that you are arguing against the notion that whoever creates the content (or own's the content) has the right to decide what gets done with that content. And no matter how much you dislike what they are doing with their content (ie. not creating a shiny interface to access said content), that does NOT give you the right to use that content without permission. It is my understanding that craigslist often gives out permissions to use it's content, and it would appear as though this company didn't bother to secure that permission.

Re: Bye Bye Craigslist

#308
post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most landlords probably never even realize the traffic first got to CL through Padmapper at all. Whenever I'm asked, I automatically just say CL. Bringing up Padmapper is just likely to confuse. CL is deliberately making its service less useful both to its paying customers and the public at large. And the sole justification for this is fear that Padmapper could grow to be a bigger, better competitor someday in the di…

How does "Leveraging a monopoly to destroy technological progress" not fall under some antitrust laws? Is it just because Craigslist is free? I definitely feel the consumer is potentially losing out due to Craigslist's monopolistic practices.

CL isn't US Steel. I doubt Craigslist even has a straight 40% of rental market share. But for urban 20-somethings looking for cheap living situations and roommates? It feels like it has 95% market share. At least in Portland.

This is all theorycraft though. If anyone had hard numbers on CL's market share for rentals I'd love to see them!

Re: Bye Bye Craigslist

#309
post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

testing nesting sorry

Re: Bye Bye Craigslist

#310
post #175

Earlier 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.

Remember, if the numbers don't support your opinion, it's because your measuring the wrong thing!

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