Craigslist isn't a charity. It is sad that they don't innovate, but it's not the responsibility of the incumbents to make the job of their would-be replacements easier. In fact that's bad business.
It would be nice if Craigslist created a platform that others could build on. Something like Facebook. http://apps.craigslist.org/mapper. I bet people would build things on their data for free even without any way of making money off it.
Exactly. The thing is, if some app becomes the way to access a Craigslist forum, Craigslist effectively loses its network advantage. If Padmapper really takes off, do you think it will hesitate to start offering rental advertising itself? And what does Craigslist get in return for the risk of that?
Funnily enough, the exact thing you described has already happened. PadMapper has a companion PadLister service (http://www.padlister.com/) that does just that.
This is very true. They could lose all that money* that they make off charging people to post there!
Oh wait.
*Miscellaneous fees for job listings in some regions, and brokered apartment listings in NY do not apply. Ask your doctor for details. Void where prohibited.
Oh well nevermind, if craigslist make a lot of money from doing something than I certainly don't want anyone else innovating and taking their business away. We as consumers need to fight for businesses right to never have to compete with anyone else and freeze others out of the market via legal threats.
No that's not really what it's like. They are using information from Craiglists site, even if you don't respect Craigslists claim to IP on the user-submitted listings you have to respect the fact that it's their servers/resources that collect and then re-feed that data directly to their competitors. They are perfectly within their right to stop that, not just legally but ethically as well... at least IMO.
You seem to be implying that the forums which don't directly contribute revenue have no impact on the network effect which makes their job advertisements valuable. That doesn't really make sense to me.
Except craigslist almost is a charity... for it's users.
It's the multi-million dollar business that provides services valued at billions of dollars, previously.
Craiglist indeed barely changes but as one of the largest sites on planet that gives you stuff with barely any bullsht, there's little reason to pine-away for that innovation, if you're someone using the site*.
If coolpads or whatever wanted to just volunteer their Ajax to craiglist and get a share of milk-and-cookies craiglist's thirty employees live on, cool. Otherwise, wipe those dollar signs out of your eyes. Go make the big bucks doing SAP consulting or something.
Padmapper provides a service on top of Craigslist: it maps Craigslist ads. It does not provide classifieds, and Craigslist does not provide mapping. There is no overlap. They are not competing.
Maybe they will compete in the future, but that's just because Craigslist isn't making any effort to provide a mapping feature.
The end game for Padmapper would definitely and without a doubt be to build its business using Craigslist and then compete with it. I wonder how many startups launched off of Craigslist.
Without a doubt? You presume that this is a standard startup with aggressive biz dev plans. It's actually mostly me working on things that I think are cool.
It's not the responsibility of incumbents to competitors. But it is part of their responsibility to their users.
That's especially true for Craigslist. A couple years back Craig and the Craigslist CEO were in front of an audience of Wall Street investors. They were asked, "How do you plan to maximize revenue?" Their answer: "We don't." Which is basically like asking the pope if those little crackers taste any good.
Craigslist is a mission-driven company. I think they've made a mistake, and that they'll realize it shortly. Perhaps by doing exactly what you suggest.
i wonder whether there is enough interest to build a community-supported "open-craigslist" on top of which anyone might build their own tools/services.
The second comment on this thread that suggests that the problem is "building an open replacement". Have you been on Craiglist lately?
You could try to replace Craigslist using only variants of the code shown in the original Rails screencast, with no consultation allowed. But you'd fail, because the result would be (from a UX perspective) better than Craigslist.
When people find a forum in which to post classifieds, they have exactly one (1) overriding goal: find the forum with the most vibrant market. There are a million zillion little things Craigslist can do better, but they are unlikely to make a big impact on that (1) goal, because Craigslist is already so vibrant that it has mostly put the rest of the classifieds "industry" (ie: newspapers) out of business.
You can disrupt Craigslist vertical by vertical, same as with eBay (before they became totally crap) and Amazon (even today).
There is really very little in common between renting or selling a house (which Craigslist is only good for in SF/SFBA, and ok in some college or other major-metro markets), selling small, highly standardized items (used iPhone 4s), selling used cars, dating or prostitution, and selling sofas. The unprofitable ghetto is selling sofas, and craigslist is the right place for that.
Amazon marketplace utterly destroys craigslist for selling most standardized, current-production items (books, electronics). There are Apple specific marketplaces for used Apple stuff which are by far the best. Etc.
Mostly because their interfaces are even EASIER for buyers than Craigslist. When I buy a used book from Amazon, it's zero friction, includes all the reviews for the new book, and has a single-button to buy (using stored payment, and shipping info, and shipping in 1-2 days for free).
I thought about adding something like this to my comment, but you said it better.
In essence, the way to take market share from Craigslist is to take any market Craigslist dominates, and reimagine it as something other than "classified ads". It seems like you have to compete with the whole concept of "classifieds", not Craiglist.
i meant it not as a way of solving the current problem so much as a way of preventing it from happening again. indeed, i haven't any great ideas about how to redirect the massive momentum that craigslist has right now.
Not very convincing. We all know the value that Padmapper brings to apartment seekers. What's harder to explain is what (if any) value Padmapper brings to Craigslist. That's really the case you'd have to make to get Craigslist to reconsider.
Also, as much as I hate to say this, the “they didn’t do anything wrong” argument is very weak. Scraping the site explicitly goes against Craigslist’s TOS:
Any copying, aggregation, display, distribution, performance or derivative use of craigslist or any content posted on craigslist whether done directly or through intermediaries (including but not limited to by means of spiders, robots, crawlers, scrapers, framing, iframes or RSS feeds) is prohibited.
By maximizing the number of people who find ads relevant to them.
It's easy to miss relevant stuff on Craigslist. I used PadMapper to find my current place. I was the only person that week who put in an offer; had I missed his ad his place would have stayed unoccupied another week at least.
That provides value to the landlord, of course, but since Craigslist charges landlords for access, increased value to landlords means increased revenue potential for Craigslist, which is certainly of value to them.
Craigslist has been quoted, to an audience of investors, with not caring to maximize revenues. Regardless, don't you think Craigslist would see the effects of PadMapper going dark, and that would be the judge of it being a lucrative venture?
The question was how Padmapper provides value to Craigslist. I answered that. The increased value is true whether or not Craigslist wants to maximize revenue.
"That's really the case you'd have to make to get Craigslist to reconsider."
There's also the possibility of making the case that shutting down PadMapper is really, really bad PR. Not to mention that there are more options here than simply killing PadMapper or returning to the prior status quo.
99% of people that use cragslist could care less. Plus, I'm pretty sure it would hurt craigslist a lot more if padmapper were to start directly competing with them.
They already run PadLister[1]. I wonder whether their endgame is to usurp Craigslist, or to continue being an aggregator? Personally I see more value in them pulling in Craigslist ads than trying to create their own community, but at this point they're really limited for options.
Maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way, but what about companies like Twitter that rely heavily on people using their API? Is there ever a concern that the apps will try to create their own network and push Twitter out?
Yeah, there is PadLister - my goal with that wasn't to usurp them with that, I just wanted to have a backup in place. It actually makes it easier to post to Craigslist. But I know how that looks :-/
It's clear that there's a good number of people who really love your product, and PadMapper is clearly a better product than Craigslist—the only thing going against you is the network effect. I don't know the specifics, but maybe there's enough of a support base that PadLister could take off the same way as AirBnB did.
Craigslist is ranked #9 in the US on Alexa. I think it's completely understandable that you're running PadLister, especially since it would take some sort of internet voodoo to make a dent in Craigslist's traffic.
The uproar over this is ridiculous. Craigslist is free to choose who can consume their data.
If you choose to build a platform that is dependent on third-party data and APIs, then you choose to accept whatever choices those third parties make that could possibly affect your application.
The whole "craigslist doesn't innovate" argument is moot. If they were selling buggy whips at a million dollar revenue rate a month, someone out there would attempt to get in that same business, copy it, mimik it, resell it, etc.
Innovators create stuff that people want to copy or leach off of. Poseurs copy and leach off of innovators.
Craigslist is free to choose who can consume their data.
That much is completely obvious; I don't think anyone is arguing that Craigslist don't have that right.
People are annoyed because shutting down PadMapper (without any effort to provide similar functionality) is a shitty thing to do. PadMapper was a useful service; now it is not useful. That is unfortunate.
Personally, it also seems hypocritical for Craigslist to claim that they just build what their users' want. I think it is hard to argue that shutting down PadMapper is consistent with that goal.
I may have a contrarian view, but Craigslist not only has the right to choose who can consume their data, but how and when. It also, has the right to make it available any which way it likes. The idea that PadMapper has any right to Craigslist postings because it is a better service is ridiculous; it's like me saying that I think your house looks unkept so I am going to move in.
Craigslist not only has the right to choose who can consume their data, but how and when. It also, has the right to make it available any which way it likes.
That is obvious, follows directly from copyright law, and is not in dispute. PadMapper does not have a right to use Craigslist's data [1], but Craigslist sending C&Ds to PadMapper and similar sites is still shitty behavior all the same.
[1] Outside of fair use and similar stuff, but that doesn't apply here.
It's not shitty, it's smart, why give your data to a potential competitor? Padmapper is obstrnsibly attempting to make money right? Why should CL let PM profit for CL data? Just because YOU like PM, doesn't mean that CL is being shitty. There's a reason CL is still on top.
As far as the UI -- that's over rated. Drudge is the top trafficked news site in the world and he hasn't changed anything since 1997. Content trumps UI.
Craiglist is breaking a service that's valuable for their users. That certainly is shitty. It may be legal, and it may be what an MBA wold tell them to do, but it is undeniably shitty.
> I don't think anyone is arguing that Craigslist don't have that right.
I most certainly am arguing that. Not only is the concept of ownership of information fundamentally mistaken in the first place (copying information doesn't deprive the original holder of anything), but even if you believe data is property, it's the property of the people who created it - not of Craigslist.
Craigslist does not allow scraping. Beg for help and for support for breaking their rules elsewhere. This is Hacker News, not "help me retain a business model after I broke rules" central.
You could alternatively hire people to spam them with nice requests to reconsider.
I fully agree, but unfortunately us hacker-kind are no longer the norm nor the majority here. It's all startups and tons of people with business degrees.
Technical papers get downvotes while people's blog posts about how to hire/fire people get upvoted.
"I just found out a few moments ago that Craigslist has sent a cease and desist to one of the most valuable sites for apartment renters ON THE PLANET, Padmapper." (emphasis mine)
Never heard of the site. Curious after this introduction I opened the site, went to my chosen hometown of Cologne, DE (1 mil people). Map's empty. Berlin, maybe? Nope. Tel Aviv, IL? Nothing.
So for all the places I care about on this very planet the service doesn't seem to work for me. That's not to slight their service at all, padmapper might be a great service. But either they depended on craigslist too much (and that's why it's barren now for me) or the writer of that blog post should tone down his introduction a bit. Is it planet or US now?
They depended on craigslist too much. It worked really well when craigslist wasn't stopping them from using craigslist. craigslist is international. Does craigslist have listings for Cologne, DE, Berlin, or Tel Aviv, IL? If it does, they would have appeared on PadMapper. I've used PadMapper before. I didn't even know they had any other sources; I thought it was strictly a mapping of craigslist listings.
Okay, that explains why it's empty now, but then again it's a strong reason for craigslist to go after them, I guess. If the service is mostly a good search ui for their data..
Regarding listings in the cities I mentioned: I only know that Tel Aviv definitely uses craigslist. I never used it in Germany before, no idea if it is relevant at all in those places.
Craigslist isn't a thing in Israel - there are a few competing sites that share one important attribute which craigslist lacks - an interface in Hebrew
Dear Craiglist, please let Padmapper continue to scrape your data for free because I find Padmapper super useful and much better than your shitty site. I'm not going to address your interests at all, because they are directly threatened by the existence of Padmapper. In fact, I'm surprised that you haven't shut down Padmapper a year ago.
Padmapper saved me dozens of hours looking for apartments vs. using the Craigslist UI. If you extrapolate this to your entire user base, padmapper can save your users millions of hours each year. That's the equivalent of several human lifetimes saved that can be spent on other pursuits.
Padmapper saves lives. Please unblock them and open your data API.
-Jacob
(Of course, Craigslist is an evil monopoly despite their happy granola reputation, so I don't expect them to listen)
"Save Padmapper" seems to be selling the company short given the diverse set of data sources and partnerships they have. I hope Craigslist comes around but my bet is PadMapper will be more than fine regardless.
Actually, the quality of the craigslist listings on Padmapper, and on craigslist in general, seem to have fallen over the past year, too. Not sure if it's the overall market or just craigslist. I was trying to disprove it by looking in Menlo just now, but unfortunately(?) just found an utterly amazing place for $2100 which is about 50% less than I would have thought, which kind of goes against this. Not from Craigslist, but from a property management company.
Just focus on making the SV/SF market amazing using padlister or partnerships with property managers. Displace Craigslist in real estate in their home market.
Yeah, when it comes to housing, the barbarians are at the gate, in the form of scammers/spammers, and Craigslist isn't really set up structurally to deal with them very well.
Maybe. I've been apartment hunting with PadMapper in NYC lately, and it's amazing how much of the postings on Craigslist (particularly no-fee) are just outright bullshit. It's a much higher proportion than the other big NYC-local sites that do no-fee search.
For my geographical area at least, the removal of Craiglist might improve the signal-noise ratio.
I was using Padmapper this morning to look at listings in the Boston area (I was actually on the phone with a friend at the time extolling the virtues of Padmapper), and went back to look at it again now -- tons of stuff gone.
The real douche bag move is to wait for something to become really successful and pervasive before sending the cease and desist. Padmapper has been around for a long time and now they decide to drop the hammer. Fuck craigslist.
This really sucks. Moving is extremely stressful. Apartment hunting is very difficult and time consuming. I was elated when I stumbled on padmapper. I'm really disappointed that it won't be available next time I move.
I have a feeling all this will be somewhat moot anyway. If Padmapper is as popular as it appears to be, then many rental companies will go straight to them and submit their units in addition to CL.
If Padmapper is really going to die without the addition of Craigslist real estate listings, then why would Craiglist want to allow them to allow them?
The really shameful part is that CL could easily implement this feature on their own with very little effort, but they won't. Someone in another thread surmised that perhaps CL is planning to roll out a mapping tool on their own. If that's the case, it's really user-hostile to kill the working tool before they replace it with something developed in-house.
What about making PadMapper client-side, including the Craigslist scraping? It'd have to be done on each request, which would hurt performance, but it may be a way of staying within their TOS (not sure if they have a provision against that; I don't use craigslist so haven't read their TOS).
Depends on how useful you are. Many scrapers are just putting out BS search engine bait. PadMapper created a great interface on top of CL's data, which created huge value for CL users.
Question: why can't Padmapper simply run as a browser plugin on the user's PC? From Craigslist's point of view, it would just look like a user who reads all the ads.
Craig is just a customer service rep. He isn't in charge of Craigslist anymore. Jim Buckmaster is the guy you want to speak to. Check out the documentary, it's pretty good.
Glad I was able to use Padmapper before this happened. Surfing through raw Craigslist entries is surely what you're forced to do in one of the circles of hell.
Padmapper is an amazingly useful tool. Couple of months ago, I had a coworker relocate from Irvine and he was raving about Padmapper before I even had the chance to tell him about it. I run into people like this on a monthly basis to the point that I brag about personally knowing Eric.
I know Padmapper makes some money but it's not exactly a cash cow—though I hope someday it will be as it definitely provided me with more value than all the Groupons and Instagrams in the world, and asked me for nothing in return.
I can almost understand by what you mean with "Silicon Valley get-rich-quick schemes" but Padmapper is the last startup I'd ever categorize as such.
You must have never used Padmapper to find your apartment. It is truly a great experience compared to crawling through pages and pages of non-standardized listings.
I just tried padmapper out and I am not impressed.
The responsiveness of the site is sluggish and the longer I wait for that page load the less time I am saving.
The listings on there now are junk. Recycled listings from aparatmentfinder, really is that all you got. When I search property on craigslist for my town and a price range I get hundreds more listings than padmapper.
Right there are two major problems with padmapper.
It would be nice if Craigslist created a platform that others could build on. Something like Facebook. http://apps.craigslist.org/mapper. I bet people would build things on their data for free even without any way of making money off it.