Content-wise there is no competition for the examples he came up with. I think their success should be credited to habit (people are now used to it) and content

Content-wise there is no competition for the examples he came up with. I think their success should be credited to habit (people are now used to it) and content, not to their 'ugly' interfaces. I think that new apps / sites like Uber and Airbnb wouldn't have succeeded with Craigslist's aesthetic and that the iPhone would have flopped if the interface looked like Windows mobile. And for a personal example, I come to Hacker news for the content and the community. I do not like the look of it.