There is no lock in. A buyer or seller is free to move place their listing or make their purchase from any number of alternatives regardless and Craigslist can't stop them.

> Sites like Craigslist and LinkedIn have become the new natural monopolies.

Mark Zuckerburg would probably disagree with that statement. In 2005 MySpace would have been the equivalent of Craigslist, massive network, shitty design and no data portability. If the value provided by alternatives to CL were as superior as most HN readers believe them to be then END USERS would see that as well and migrate just like MySpace users migrated to FB. But they don't so CL retains its dominance, the failure of alternatives is not indication that CL is cheating or doing anything even remotely monopolistic.

> And demanding that they open up their data is the natural, and right, action to bring back natural market competition that benefits consumers and the world at large.

The data is open, just not in a format you think you are entitled to it in. It's open in that the same poster that put their listing on CL can post the same listing on alternatives, they just choose not to. Convince the seller or buyer of the value you bring to the table and they will open their data to you as well.

Many HN readers have reached the conclusion that convenience and competition are the same thing. They aren't.

    If the value provided by alternatives to CL were as superior as most
    HN readers believe them to be then END USERS would see that as well and
    migrate just like MySpace users migrated to FB.

This type of dilemma is known as a collective action problem. When these problems arise the best way forward is often to have a superauthority such as the government step in for everyone's benefit. For example, even though it is generally accepted that free trade increases the world's prosperity when it is practiced around the world, individual countries occasionally see immediate advantage in adopting mercantilist or protectionist economic policies. The GATT is an attempt to provide a superauthority to stop such practices, because the immediate gains possible when a country embargoes an enemy are not as valuable as a system where the majority of actors behave in open and unbiased ways.

The free market doesn't work on its own. When there are systemic problems in the way actors conduct business, judiciously applied regulation can help promote the public interest.

    That's not necessarily true. I see network effects as something of a negative externality, one that is hit particularly hard by the tragedy of the commons. The problem is that even if every single person on Facebook decided that YourBookSpace was a better website that provided more value, no one would leave because until everyone else followed, your network wouldn't be there.

    This type of dilemma is known as a collective action problem.

What most on HN don't want to admit is that the brilliance of their code or the beauty of their design alone are not enough to guarantee success. We still have to market our wares and if the value derived from our code+designs isn't greater than the value provided by CL's network + usability + cost then that doesn't mean we call our parents or a referee or a senator and tell them we need the playing field leveled because the end users are too lazy to see how deserving we are of their business.

Paper classified still exist, web based CL alternatives still exist (Backpages.com is a big one), CL is not a monopoly and a "superauthority" is not the answer.

And how would we know when a "superauthority" needs to step in, "judiciously applied" is subjective. Successful passing of SOPA would have been "judiciously applied" "superauthority" in the eyes of the entertainment industry.

   The free market doesn't work on its own.

I do think there are web companies who could really do some anti-competitive things that we should watch out for. Facebook is probably the most capable, or maybe Google if they went off the deep end and started holding companies hostage through their search. The argument still stands, I think, even if it doesn't justify intervening on behalf of a company that wants to improve Craigslist search.

Craigslist disrupted a huge classified industry without any legislator saying that papers had to "open" up their data. Markets work over time.

Craigslist disrupted the classifieds industry because it had first-mover advantage in a new medium, the Internet. It now abuses that advantage in order to not innovate or even compete.

The market is not working over time -- proof is how everyone complains about how crappy Craigslist is.

But a solution, for example, could be something like: legislators could force companies with over, say, 25% market share, that are mainly based on user-generated content, to not be able to sue other companies if those companies re-display information originally input by users, that is publicly visible on the site.

This wouldn't force Craigslist to alter its behavior one bit. But it would allow entrepreneurs to actually fight once again on the basis of their ideas, as opposed to whoever had first-mover advantage and subsequent network lock-in.

Then their ideas are simply not better enough.

Two - you have way more faith in our legislators than I do. Remember SOPA, PIPA etc from way back in the day. Oh wait - that was a few months ago.

Inviting legislators in - be careful what you wish for.

An idea can't "beat" Craigslist. It's the whole of a product and team mixed up with constantly shifting market dynamics and human preferences.

It's just way more complicated, and legislation shouldn't even come into the conversation here unless the company is provably violating another's civil or property rights. Are they?

Here's an idea that can beat Craigslist: put up billboards all over town, offering $500 per ad to property managers and individual landlords in return for giving your site a 4-week exclusive on those ads.

That's the only way people will stop putting ads on Craigslist first, which in turn will be the only reason people will stop looking there first.

Network effects as powerful as Craigslist's can't be fought with a better product alone, as you point out. (See eBay for another example.) You either have to spend some money to take their market from them, or you have to be there when they fuck up.

And whatever else you can say about Craigslist, they are very, very good at not fucking up.

I'm not so sure (for reasonable values of "forever"). From what I see, once some software hits a critical mass, it's nearly inextricable.

Look at Microsoft. Before they became a major player, the dominant OS and computer system would seem to shift every couple of years; Amiga, Commodore, Apple, etc., but once Microsoft became a major player they never really lost their grip. They continue to maintain that grip simply because so many people were familiarized on their systems and so much software was written for those systems. Does anyone really believe that someone looks at OS X and Windows these days and decides that Windows is objectively superior? Most people, even technical people who hate Apple's MO, would admit that OS X is better on its merits alone.

The reason that MS has dominated and continues to dominate is because of the software available for the platform. It's all about lock-in. People don't use Windows because it has more compelling features than OS X, they use Windows because they want to play games, buy software off the shelf and know it will run without any problems, or run their company's internal software.

Let's take Facebook as another example. For years there was a pretty constant, roughly bi-annual shift in the most prominent "social networking" site; LiveJournal, Friendster, Xanga, etc., until Facebook. Around 2008 Facebook began eating MySpace's lunch and Facebook remains undisputed social networking champ today with no signs of slowage.

I'm concerned that Facebook is the new Microsoft -- it has become the de-facto standard, and despite any number of superior features that may be developed in other systems, it doesn't look like anyone is going to be able to challenge Facebook seriously. Some would say that Google was perhaps the most worthy challenger, but even they have failed to really make a dent despite the fact that most of the world visits their search and email services daily.

I'm not sure exactly where that critical mass gets hit but I think it's hard to reverse once it happens. Maybe it's something like, "Once your grandparents use a certain program because everyone else does, it's relatively safe to call it 'ingrained'." I know that my grandma had no compulsion to create a MySpace profile even though she constantly [attempts to] check[s] Facebook now, and I also know that it'd be extremely difficult to train her to use a non-Windows interface.

Ahem. I may not use it because it has more compelling features than OS X, but I did not rule out OS X because of lock-in.

1. The goal of almost every rational business is to achieve a monopoly in a certain space. If the public or the government had the power to systematically break up every company who comes close to success, there would be little incentive to start a business. Perfectly-competitive industries are awful for business owners. You have to draw a line in the sand, before-which monopolies as tolerable. I don't think Craigslist is anywhere near that line.

2. A huge part of anti-trust laws means that companies engage in anti-competitive practices. To the best of my knowledge, Craigslist isn't doing this. It's simply refusing to willingly participate in its own destruction.

3. I question your usage of the words "normal" and "natural". First you claim that monopolies indicate the failure of normal capitalistic competition. Then you claim that monopolies naturally occur. Then you claim that we need to act to bring back natural market competition. So which is it? Are monopolies "natural" or is competition? And why does something being "natural" make it good?

So, so many people have forgotten this. Thanks for pointing it out.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy

1. No, the goal of most businesses is not generally to achieve a monopoly, the goal of most businesses is market share or just profit. A company can have 100% market share and not be a monopoly, if the barriers to entry for new market participants are comparable to the original barriers to entry for the current winner (so there aren't network effects, or prohibitive capital investment relative to divided market size).

2. I never talked about anti-trust laws or anti-competitive practives. I talked about natural monopolies [1], which have nothing whatsoever to do with those. You're thinking of artificial monopolies, something totally different.

3. I said "normal capitalistic competition" in the sense of competition outside of special cases (like monopolies). And "natural monopoly" is an economics term [1]. I used neither in a normative sense.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly

Consumers do not get to choose alternative railways. They can chose alternative classefeids services; those services are just inferior (maybe they have a better UI but they aren't as good at selling things)