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Craigslist Is Ugly, Janky, Old School, and Unbeatable

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Re: Craigslist Is Ugly, Janky, Old School, and Unbeatable

#71

Post by cc439 »

codingdave wrote: post #7

It isn't universal, though. One of the things you find if you move to Utah is, "Don't bother with Craigslist." I mean, it exists here. It gets some use. But most people use the online classifieds from ksl.com, the local TV station. At least, I think it is a TV station. I've never watched it, but everyone uses their online classifieds instead of craigslist. Their site also is ugly, and full of difficult buyers and poo…

Now you have me wondering how that site managed to retain its position at the top of the regional heap. My dad was obsessed with Saturday morning tag sales when I was a kid so he was an early adopter of various local proto-Craigslists. I can't remember the name of the site which was the king of the CT market but it was very similar to the familiar front page of Craigslist which is still in use today.

Craigslist took over despite not having anything meaningful to offer over this site as it was free to list with a single picture and this was before the era of ad-infested local sites. I'm honestly surprised to learn a local competitor managed to withstand the Craigslist juggernaut.

Re: Craigslist Is Ugly, Janky, Old School, and Unbeatable

#72

Post by silencio »

SN76477 wrote: post #43
ulkram wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure anonymous is always a good thing for CL. When I'm buying/selling stuff on CL, I wish I had more info on who I'm dealing with.

But that responsibility shouldn't fall on Craigslist who is a simple service provider. Im sure that you can ask people on craigslist for a phone number, meet in a public place, etc.

Alas it's not always enough.

I think the (slightly) higher threshold for creating even a throwaway account elsewhere makes for a better experience in the long run. I needed to get rid of a lot of stuff in the past couple months and fb/nextdoor/freecycle was more productive in a week than craigslist was in two months.

Same story for paid job listings on craigslist - I just put one up a few weeks ago. I'm starting to find that it's getting worse as time goes by for things like restaurant jobs. I've slowly started using other ways to find new hires, and next time craigslist won't be on my radar unless everything else falls through. Not that my few hundred bucks a year is a big deal for them, but I kinda expect better and get better from competitors.

Re: Craigslist Is Ugly, Janky, Old School, and Unbeatable

#73

Post by fl0wenol »

GoodbyeEarl wrote: post #44
grapevines wrote: post #3

Network effect, reliability, free, anonymous, ability to run without JavaScript. If Craigslist decided to modernize today, they could potentially disrupt the state of things on the internet. Facebook is trying to move in on their territory for sure. Unfortunately, I don't think they will. If a new-kid-on-the-block could offer anonymity, reliability, and free regional market based transactions, with preferably integra…

I'd really like to know how to deal with users input, forms and other stuff without JS. Every tutorial we see today is like "throw tons of JS to this problem and it shall work".

Are you being facetious? Otherwise I feel old.

When I learned HTML4 forms and CGI, javascript was solely the domain of input validation if it was available.

Okay I definitely feel old.

Re: Craigslist Is Ugly, Janky, Old School, and Unbeatable

#74

Post by jjawssd »

20years wrote: post #63

Am I the only one who doesn't think Craigslist is "Ugly or Janky"? It's one of the only places left on the web where I can go and not be bombarded by ads, pop ups, crazy amount of JavaScript and slow loading. It just works and is intuitive to use. The only major thing I feel is missing is the ability to search through multiple locations at the same time.

Search multiple Craigslist locations: http://www.searchtempest.com/

Re: Craigslist Is Ugly, Janky, Old School, and Unbeatable

#75

Post by 1_2__3 »

grapevines wrote: post #3

Network effect, reliability, free, anonymous, ability to run without JavaScript. If Craigslist decided to modernize today, they could potentially disrupt the state of things on the internet. Facebook is trying to move in on their territory for sure. Unfortunately, I don't think they will. If a new-kid-on-the-block could offer anonymity, reliability, and free regional market based transactions, with preferably integra…

They already did disrupt it, you just aren't cognizant of the fact that you life in that post-disruption world. It's hard to imagine what could have been, but I suspect there'd be a confetti of paid services (likely absolutely horrible side-projects by local newspapers) that everyone hated but still had to use.

Re: Craigslist Is Ugly, Janky, Old School, and Unbeatable

#76

Post by aantix »

20years wrote: post #63

Am I the only one who doesn't think Craigslist is "Ugly or Janky"? It's one of the only places left on the web where I can go and not be bombarded by ads, pop ups, crazy amount of JavaScript and slow loading. It just works and is intuitive to use. The only major thing I feel is missing is the ability to search through multiple locations at the same time.

But if they just wrote an SPA and overrode the back button behavior and displayed a little spinner icon while html was loaded via json, your experience would be so much better.

Re: Craigslist Is Ugly, Janky, Old School, and Unbeatable

#77

Post by 1_2__3 »

csharpminor wrote: post #19

I actually think that Craigslist will come to see tough competition from Facebook Marketplace. Facebook has the existing user base to get a network effect, has a much better UI, notifications, and solves for the worry of meeting someone who is a complete unknown. Will be interesting to see if Facebook chips away at the Craigslist user-base over the next few years.

I'm skeptical FB will make inroads here. One of the bedrocks of FB, positive or negative, is that it connects together people who already know each other in some way. Craigslist is the polar opposite of that.

Re: Craigslist Is Ugly, Janky, Old School, and Unbeatable

#78

Post by squozzer »

I think people miss the bigger picture. CL is the classified section, only 1000x easier to use, both buying and selling.

Generally the stuff sold has a low, but non-zero, payoff / hassle ratio (e.g. furniture), but most of its charm has to do with its rough edges (flaky users, tag spam), which adds a little sense of adventure.

One of my friends whom I would characterize as a semi-pro CL user says some of his best deals came from stuff the seller hadn't listed on CL.

Re: Craigslist Is Ugly, Janky, Old School, and Unbeatable

#79

Post by MiddleEndian »

laurentdc wrote: post #17
grapevines wrote: post #3

Network effect, reliability, free, anonymous, ability to run without JavaScript. If Craigslist decided to modernize today, they could potentially disrupt the state of things on the internet. Facebook is trying to move in on their territory for sure. Unfortunately, I don't think they will. If a new-kid-on-the-block could offer anonymity, reliability, and free regional market based transactions, with preferably integra…

> ability to run without JavaScript. Genuinely asking - is that still an important quality as of today?

When I visit Craigslist, it loads almost instantaneously, similar to how Hacker News does now, or Gmail used to years ago. This is not the case for sites that use JavaScript to position everything.

Re: Craigslist Is Ugly, Janky, Old School, and Unbeatable

#80

Post by emilecantin »

erik wrote: post #42
codingdave wrote: post #7

It isn't universal, though. One of the things you find if you move to Utah is, "Don't bother with Craigslist." I mean, it exists here. It gets some use. But most people use the online classifieds from ksl.com, the local TV station. At least, I think it is a TV station. I've never watched it, but everyone uses their online classifieds instead of craigslist. Their site also is ugly, and full of difficult buyers and poo…

Similarly, Kijiji actually found success in Canada, and has quite a bit more traffic than Craigslist for most cities here.

In Quebec, Craigslist is virtually unknown (with maybe a little traffic in Montreal, but I'm not sure), everyone used LesPAC first, and then Kijiji when it came along. You needed to pay to post an ad on LesPAC, so it quickly lost market share when a free competitor emerged.

Both of these have a French-language version, and I believe it had a lot to do with CL's failure to get the market here.

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