I think the reason people here feel this way is because the general consensus among HN users is that the best product wins and that's all that matters. If a company has a monopoly on data and refuses to provide an API they're saying that they don't want to compete on the quality of their product (craigslist for example) they want to keep their position without the benefits to the users.
Padmapper made craigslist apartment searches much better, instead of making their own apartment searches better craigslist shut Padmapper's access to craigslist data down. It shows that they value their own business more than they value the experience of their users, which to a lot of people here isn't exactly "good".
Companies are free to do with their data whatever they want and they're free to restrict access to it however they like, sure, but it's still lame when a company does it because they don't want to improve their product and don't like competition.
If a company has a monopoly on data and refuses to provide an API they're saying that they don't want to compete on the quality of their product
This implies that part of the quality of a product is NOT the ability to gather data. This would be like me walking into a Walmart, setting up a cash register next to theirs and start ringing up customers and arguing that Walmart can't compare with my customer service. Ignoring that customer service is just one small part of the business. Walmart had to find the property, buy the property, do the legal work to get the product on the shevles, the negotiation, the supply chain management, etc... I can't just focus on the last mile and then argue that I'm entitled to everything else they did.
Craigslist built its name, it's reputation, it's backend, it's API, vetted a business model for its services, scouted out regions to focus on etc...
Furthermore, people are arguing the data is the users, not CLs. True, but the user gave it to CL, not to you. When I loan books to a neighbor I assume they aren't going to create a library of my loaned books (unless they specifically told me so).
Well said. I'm actually shocked that a community of entrepreneurs would take the position that it's OK to demand access to a company's competitive advantage in order to compete with them.
I'm not sure if it's a sense of entitlement fostered by all the seemingly easy money around tech startups or simply sheer laziness.
Well, I can't believe an entire community of entrepreneurs actually beleive this is a design/data use/competition issue and are failing to mention that Craigslist is protecting one of their ONLY sources of income. House postings.
Housing is 1 of the 2 things (job postings in certain cities is the other) that Craigslist charges for. So if Padmapper gets popular, starts listing from it's own website and people go directly to it, bypassing Craigslist, Craigslist takes a Massive hit in revenue.
THIS is a huge weakness. If you want to kill Craigslist start with Housing and Job postings in the cities that Craigslist charges for. Those 2 things ALONE are what are funding all of Craigslist.
Actually, Craigslist values us, the users, more than most companies. You know how? By leaving so much money on the table that you can't help but love them! Craigslist is a breath of fresh air in a world where everything is optimized as much as possible to part us from our money!
Craigslist aren't doing this strictly out of the kindness of their hearts.
By charging for only a small number of listing, CL accomplish two things:
1. They create a large marketplace, which by virtue of its size provides more value than if it were a smaller, more diversified set of markets.
2. It "sucks the oxygen out of the room" for any competitor attempting to create a similar service. There are a few other commerce-related online sites -- eBay, Amazon, iTunes store, etc., and even a few competing specialized listings services (jobs, apartments, etc.) -- but none that specifically serve the general classifieds market.
I do suspect that there's a genuine component to CL's community service mission. But that doesn't mean the self-serving aspects of its behavior are any less valid.
I agree. I've always felt they've had good intentions, and I think that they do in this case as well. They are looking out for the posters who are entrusting them with their data.
That might be also one of the basis for the long time success of Craigslist. Absolute simplicity combined with a rigorous un-intrusive experience for the regular user - no ads, no sign up, no follow us on Twitter.
I don't see how Craigslist refusing to better themselves justifies the millions of hours wasted by their customers using their shitty UI. What a strange sense of justice.
If you value users, don't hurt yourself to show it. Rather, don't shut off sites that save them hours of their limited and precious lifetime.
It's pretty easy to assert that Craigslist is somehow disrespecting their users - perhaps by having poor UI - but it's harder to prove that assertion by setting up a competing service with your idea of a "better UI" for the users.
It seems abundantly clear to me that the assertion that "A competitor to Craigslist who got $x right would easily get all Craigslist's users", for any of the usually mentioned values of $x [web design, UI, UX, customer service, search, API, other services using their API, …] - is nothing more than a head-in-the-sand misapprehension on the part of startup/web design/UI people. Craigslist _users_ have not "jumped ship" en-mass to any technically or graphically "better" alternative - and it's hardly from lack of trying by people who're _sure_ they will.
I think sometimes we need to get out of the HN/startup/bay-area echo chamber - I'm pretty sure Newmarket and his crew have a much different view of what their user base wants than any assumptions made by the HN zeitgeist…
Do you understand the concept of "monopoly power"? It sounds like you do not.
I, personally, save several hours every time I look for an apartment by using padmapper over Craigslist. Aggregated, that's human lifetimes of time saved every year by padmapper.
UI isn't about round corners and fancy color schemes. It's about using computers to automate repetitive behaviors. Newmark's defenders tell me what I really want is to waste my limited lifetime clicking manually through entries on his shitty site. But no, I really don't.
Question: what "monopoly power" do you believe Craigslist has? What product or service can you _only_ buy from Craigslist? Are they the only way to find an apartment to rent? Are they the only way to advertise an apartment to rent? (Note, your answers there may be very_ different from my perceptions of the answers to those questions - for me locally here in Sydney Australia, Craigslist _exists_, but isn't even close to a bit-player in real-estate/aparement-rental, never mind a major player - and it'd be _laughable_ to accuse them of "monopoly")
"Fuck Craigslist. Seriously."
Because they "cost" you "several hours" everytime you choose to use them to look for an apartment? Which is what - twice a year maybe? And this cost to you is somehow greater then the newspaper classifieds market they disrupted? Without some more backstory - I can't help but think you're _seriously_ over-reacting…
> I, personally, save several hours every time I look for an apartment by using padmapper over Craigslist.
> Fuck Craigslist. Seriously.
It's a bit disingenuous to say fuck Craigslist when the data you are using above...comes from Craigslist. Shouldn't you have switched to Zillow or another service by now if you hate Craigslist so much?
"UI isn't about round corners and fancy color schemes. It's about using computers to automate repetitive behaviors."
I think my point still stands - if there's a better way to do it that's so obvious, why hasn't somebody _done_ it and grabbed all the users? Google did it to Alta Vista. Facebook did it to MySpace (who did it to Friendster who did it to Tribe…)
It seems to me as though Newmark has balanced the often conflicting requirements of "people wanting to advertise stuff" and "people wanting search through advertisements" better than anyone else. Craigslist wouldn't have any data worth publishing in an API if they didn't address the needs of the advertisers. Padmapper doesn't have any data at all - why should Craigslist give them their apartment rental data just so Padmapper can compete with Craigslist without having the constraint of having to satisfy the advertiser well enough for them to provide the data in the first place?
Simple. I don't think Craig is trying to flip his company for an acqu-hire. I don't think Craig will have any investors pulling him by the short hairs towards an IPO.
My prejudice is that PadMapper probably wants to flip the company, and even if they don't, they probably have investors who want them to.
You know PadMapper is a one-man operation? I don't think Eric (the guy behind it) even has investors. It seems like something he just hacked up in his spare time.
I know I can't use the Craigslist website, and can only use mobile apps which provide a much better interface.
I hope that Craigslist changes their mind and decides to allow websites to license their API. If they don't, however, then Padmapper should just adapt and become mobile-exclusive, or try to generate their own apartment listings instead of depending on Craigslist.
That is not strictly true. A better search would save the users time, compared to clicking through CL pages, which for popular categories could be overwhelming.
But if that doesn't matter to Craig & co, and people still use the site, revenue still stays as expected, they can just NOT mess with it and go play video games or whatever.
It's not "their" data. It's their user's data. As a user and a homeowner I post my rental listing to Craigslist because that's where the most prospective renters are.
In the past, do you think anybody ever looked at the classifieds page in a newspaper and thought "this data is owned by the Times"?
In the PadMapper case, who are the losers? Renters benefit from a radically different UI and de-cluttering of daily reposts. Owners benefit from the increased traffic to their listing. Craigslist benefits because it's more of a 1-stop-shop for owners: post to craigslist (and pay them), and get some level of syndication to different services and apps. They also aren't losing out from reduced mindshare of renters: when you use PadMapper you know you're using Craigslist. It's always obvious and all links point there.
I've posted a couple things to Craigslist. Maybe it's different for rental listings, but for what I've posted, Craigslist did not demand exclusivity. If I wanted to post my listing to some other service, I was free to do that.
Similarly, regardless of what Craigslist's policies are with regards to third party access: it's still your data, right? You are free to post it to an open classifieds service?
That being the case, from where do you derive this idea that Craiglist has somehow taken custody of your data, and thus owes the rest of the industry some measure of access to it? Why is that Craigslist's job? If you want there to be multiple competing listing services, push your data to multiple services.
It might be your data, but that doesn't somehow make it Craigslist responsibility to share it with other applications. If you want your data listed in as many places as possible, register with each and every system, and enter it.
In the past, do you think when you submitted a classified to 1 newspaper, they called up all the other local and regional papers to submit your information too?
Why on earth would another newspaper print an ad or a classified that they're not being paid for?
Also, do you have any examples of this hypothetical happening and newspaper A not having a problem with it? Outside of tabloid culture, ye olde newspapers had much more in the way of principles, and using another's content without permission was reprehensible.
> Why on earth would another newspaper print an ad or a classified that they're not being paid for?
It's kind of funny, isn't it? On the one hand we have the newspapers, who are being slowly killed off by the internet, and on the other hand we have internet startups like Padmapper who are doing things that are absolutely and plainly stupid when you imagine them being done by newspapers rather than web startups.
Here we have one company that allows free classified ads for almost everything, everywhere (Craigslist) on the one hand, and another company that scrapes free classified ads for rental housing and accepts no payment from anyone (Padmapper). Very strange.
FWIW, to me, Padmapper drives traffic to Craigslist rather than competing with it. Whether that traffic is valuable to Craigslist or not I can't say.
Actually, this is really interesting. If a free newspaper did start repulishing ads and the primary paper cut them off, the ad posters would be up in arms because their audience is now reduced.
Its a loose loose scenario, much better to allow the reproductuon for everyone.
What if newspaper B held positions the advertiser didn't want to be identified with? Or had readers the advertiser didn't want to do business with? Or presented their ads in a way that they didn't want? I don't think you can assume the advertiser cares only about the widest audience.
Don't forget that screen-scraping doesn't work in print journalism - transferring the ads is labour-intensive.
But even if the labour was free and paper B was willing to print ads/classifieds for no money, it's still a drain on paper A's resources - running a classifieds department required staff taking calls for placed ads, plus editorial work and similar. If paper B takes those ads and sells them at a lower price, then paper A will lose out on revenue for value created by their staff.
What Craigslist has is what economists call "positive network externalities" or network effects. Which just means that it's a really valuable service because tons of other people use it. Buyers go there because lots of people are selling, and lots of people selling go there because they know lots of buyers visit the site.
This is the perennial frustration with the immense power of the network effect, a power that all start-ups live and die on.
Unfortunately, us humans have a hard time banding together and forming enough consensus to 'jump ship' enmass to a new service. Especially, when the a lack of 'innovative features' on a given service barely registers on the pain scale.
Look at the internets SOPA protest, the entire integrity of the internet was threatened and we did something about it. But how can you generate enough support around: we need better mash-ups to view craigslist postings!
So, what are we supposed to do? Seems like the only options are:
A) destroy the network effect with legislation. (How is this good?)
B) select another company The Board feels has a better platform, crush CL with legislation, and establish the new company with legislation. (How is this good!?!)
Why the references to legislation? The free market can fix this IF the Craigslist experience really is bad. You might not be able to grow organically like Craigslist did but it is totally possible. Pay listers to post on your site. Offer something unique to the listers Craigslist can't.
I presume that is what we are talking about, when people here complain that nobody has been able to defeat Craigslist and that Craigslist ought to die (in so many words).
No legislation! We aren't supposed to do anything other than decide which services to freely use and not. Our collective actions make the market dynamic, and if some company is winning and you don't like it, don't resort to violence (legislation).
We need legislation to stop people from abusing legislation. Err.
The solution suggested in "Crossing the Chasm" is not a frontal assault, but to completely dominate a niche. A frontal assault is impossible, and no one ever succeeds. Microsoft did something that IBM didn't care too much about initially. Google started out doing something that was tangential for Microsoft. Facebook did not go head to head with ads and search with Google initially either.
Is it really? I think all these derisive comments against CL are focusing on tangential details to the classified ad market.
If I place a classified ad it is to find a buyer for the services or product I'm trying to move. CL currently does that better than the competition. Yet the comments I see being handed around are about UI, design, automation and other items that might, but don't actually increase my chance of selling. To replace CL those sites need to provide the person posting the ad with a chance of finding a buyer that's equal to or greater than CL.
If those new start-ups can't provide that, but only have a shinier UI to offer, then they're competing on irrelevant details that aren't the main drivers behind people's decisions to post/view CL.
Others have mentioned marketing approaches and techniques to help improve those aspects. But most of what I've read is summarized as: "we'll provide a better app/ui/api" and that's a noble goal, but the reason for existing of these sits is to connect seller with buyer, what do those things bring to the table if a new app lacks a sufficiently large viewing audience? That's the problem that needs solving, not the app/ui/api one.
"the general consensus among HN users is that the best product wins and that's all that matters"
That's human nature. Users in marketing communities conclude that it's the best marketing that wins. If you're an executive you think the best management team is all that matters. Designers think it's design. PR folks think it's press. Financiers think it's money.
I have bad news for everyone. The world does not work in the way our echo-chambers would seem to model it. It's almost impossible for the human mind to process such a fact. Yet, it's true.
Craigslist's one goal in the world is to make a profit. That's it. Everything else comes secondary. If they decide that providing users a service will help them accomplish this, then have them provide a good service (which they do). However, they don't owe anything to any businesses or even any users. If users don't like this, let them go to an alternative. Welcome to capitalism, where the users decide what product they want. (Now if you don't like what the majority of users are deciding, then that's another issue altogether.)
Craigslist is a privately-owned company and was actually a non-profit at one point. In the past Craig Newmark has talked about Craigslist as a tool for community organization and so on. If Craigslist were 100% profit-driven I think it could have made a lot more money off of its huge user base.
That's actually an interesting enough theory that I'd love to test.
My guess is that the site is generally mediocre enough that it would be hard to get more people to open their wallets except for select listing types.
If they charged to view the listings for example, I'd wager that very few people would bother and they'd lose their network effect.
My guess is that they're getting about as much money as they can without offending too many people as preservation of their user network is highest priority, as it is what allows them to keep charging money for the few things they charge for currently.
Just by putting un-offsensive elements such as a single Adsense box on each site they should be able to generate serious additional revenue without experiencing that much of critique. With that kind of traffic and legitimate profile, the un-intrusive revenue options are endless. Just additional fees for highlighted listings, dynamic pricing for a slower decay of a posting, etc. But the beauty of Craigslist is its absolute no-frills approach and consistency over years and years. Reminds me a bit on the success of Drudge. Similarly weathering all storms by concentrating on content and simplicity to the extreme.
I was naively thinking of charging users more money to increase revenue, and while you've pointed out a few very viable ways that they could easily get more wallets open, the real gold mine is likely ad revenue that nobody would bat an eye at.
The targeting/CPM would likely be fairly low, but by sheer volume alone, they'd rake it in I suspect.
I believe that the CPM for ads on Craigslist would be higher than it is for Reddit or Facebook. The key is that people browsing Craigslist are usually there to buy something rather than seeking free entertainment. Advertisers really value audiences who are ready to buy a product in their market.
You talk as if there is perfect market choice - that if a majority of customers want something, it will happen. In the real world, there is not perfect market choice. There are many factors which make it impossible to have perfect market choice. We are probably stuck with Craigslist and LinkedIn for a while, and for the most part, we are stuck with the decisions that their executives make.
It's true that if they do something highly awful, then that might create enough demand for a competitor to take over. But it would have to be a high degree of awfulness to overcome their existing momentum. There are many shades of not-quite-awful, where those companies can make decisions with market impunity.
So considering that we're kinda stuck with those guys, I think the question becomes, why shouldn't we complain if they are doing something that we don't like? Doesn't matter who owes who what. It's our world, we should try to improve it.
You should complain if you really want to, that's part of the market force.
I think perfect market choice is a funny idea. Why would anyone assume the market would function on such a limited plane of understanding, that all you had to do was poll people, you could trust their verbal response, and decide that's what the market should do?
People very often do things in contrast with what they say, even what they believe consciously. There is so much more at play than what people would "vote" for in the sense of a "perfect market choice".
Save it for econ class. A company's goal is to build a sustainable profit generating engine. To allow this, it needs to play a constructive part in the marketplace and community.
A company does not need to provide a constructive part of the community to achieve their goal of profitability... they just have to provide something that some segment of the population is willing to pay for, or build in a degree of lock-in that guarantees continued profits.
For example, It's probably fair to say that Monsanto is not a constructive part of the marketplace and community, but they sure do have a sustainable profit generating engine.
Edit - if you're going to downvote, how about some discussion as to how this comment does not add to the conversation... since I'm sure there was some other reason for the downvote other than not agreeing with me :)
And if they're not a constructive part of the community, the community has every right (I think it's practically an obligation) to berate them for it.
Just having a business plan and making money should not protect you from criticism or absolve behavior detrimental to the general community! Yes, legally Craigslist has no obligations; that's why nobody's litigating. I argue that morally (at least from a utilitarian standpoint), Craigslist does have an obligation to play nice. And so I welcome critical blog posts and bad publicity.
Oh, I agree 100% that if the community disagrees with the behavior of an entity they they have every right to berate them. And if a company behaves poorly enough, it will open the floodgates for competitors and revenue loss (i.e. GoDaddy during SOPA probably lost an appreciable number of customers).
That being said, in this specific case I think that whether or not there is a moral obligation to let a third party scrape and mix-in your data is very debatable (given that Craigslist does not provide an API).
Sure, people should play nice. And some may interpret playing nice as 'don't scrape other people's stuff for your own startup'. Or at least don't be suprised when they get pissed ;)
You could take tabaco companies, much of alcohol, gambling, TV and other addictive "entertainments", and to the extend that they are enterprises (if not legal), much of the arms trade, mafia / organized crime, illegal drugs trade, and modern banking, as not providing net social benefits. While generating profits.
Lets get to basics, If product was providing value and doesn't anymore there will be attrition to userbase and that is the gist of it. It is also the foundation of wealth building and whatnot. Ancillary benefits, as APIs are, help shallow out the curve of obsolescence or even grow the product sometimes if cards are played right, but that is that...
Padmapper made craigslist apartment searches much better, instead of making their own apartment searches better craigslist shut Padmapper's access to craigslist data down. It shows that they value their own business more than they value the experience of their users, which to a lot of people here isn't exactly "good".
Companies are free to do with their data whatever they want and they're free to restrict access to it however they like, sure, but it's still lame when a company does it because they don't want to improve their product and don't like competition.