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Network effect, reliability, free, anonymous, ability to run without JavaScript. If Craigslist decided to modernize today, they could potentially disrupt the s

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 integration with Monero, it would be a killer app for the crypto industry.

vyrotek 10y ago
From what I understand, people started local garage sale groups on Facebook specifically to remove anonymity. It's a benefit for those people. Facebook is just taking what is already a massively popular use of their groups feature and officially supporting it. It won't replace craigslist but it will do just fine.
laurentdc 10y ago
> ability to run without JavaScript. Genuinely asking - is that still an important quality as of today?
- wfn 10y ago
  It certainly is for some (e.g. me and some people I know). I think quite a few people get pissed off at websites which do not have live content (it's live if it can't be cached; Craigslist content, e.g., can be cached) but require JS just to render the basic text. It doesn't help if those sites also make 100+ requests. And yes, some folks still prefer text-based browsers when possible. :) I do realize the latter make up quite a small percentage only, though...
- christophilus 10y ago
  As mentioned elsewhere, the average user probably doesn't know or care about JavaScript. They do know and care about simplicity and speed. Not having JavaScript (or only very little) often positively affects speed. (See Hacker News vs Redis on mobile for an example of this.)
- MiddleEndian 10y ago
  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.
  - flukus 10y ago
    > or Gmail used to years ago Sure you weren't using the basic html version? Because I've been using gmail since it was invite only and it always had a loading spinner.
    - MiddleEndian 10y ago
      Perhaps I was. I used to use NoScript around the time I started using Gmail, but gave up at some point because I started having to disable it on almost every site I visited.
- r00fus 10y ago
  In the sense that no JS = better performance on slower PCs - yes, I'd say that's a selling point. My 70+ parents just listed and sold dozens of items in their spring cleaning - first time they used CL and they did it without my help. They might have had more problems if CL was "jazzed up".
37 10y ago
>If Craigslist decided to modernize today I misread this as "decided to monetize today" and interpreted an IPO. Has Craigslist ever thought about this? Any thoughts?
- stephancoral 10y ago
  Craigslist has nearly $300 million in profit and only around 30 employees. Why on earth would they ever want to go public?
  - xyzzy4 10y ago
    Public stock is much more liquid.
    - aanm1988 10y ago
      Stock doesn't matter if you can just toss employees cash whenever you want.
    - trafficlight 10y ago
      Unlike those fat stacks of cash in their bank account.
  - walterbell 10y ago
    What's their annual revenue?
    - stephancoral 10y ago
      $381 million in 2015. I'd be interested in seeing where the 81 mil goes
  - appleiigs 10y ago
    Using EBay's P/E ratio of 21x, Craigslist owners have 2 options: 1. $300MM in profit each year, which has risk of going up or down. 2. Sell company for $6.3 billion ($300 x 21) and walk. Note: I don't have time to investigate why Bloomberg is telling me EBay PE ratio is 21, vs Google Finance is 5x.
Arizhel 10y ago
>Facebook is trying to move in on their territory for sure. Unfortunately, I don't think they will. Why "unfortunately"? This is a good thing. Facebook is horrible, in many different ways, and the last thing we need is to hand even more power over the internet to them. CL is "ugly", but it's fast and works great, and isn't filled with ads and tracking, something I definitely can't say about Facebook.
- mynameisvlad 10y ago
  Real competition in general is good, it'd force both products to improve.
  - itomato 10y ago
    The only way Facebook could "improve" is to fade away completely.
    - ianai 10y ago
      I think facebook serves a purpose but I also agree with your statement. The last thing I want are more places relying on facebook. I deleted my facebook to get away from it. Huge "but" though: I did get value out of facebook when I was younger. It's for that reason that I think it's probably a good thing. Of course...there's also the ever present threat of a new social network growing up with another generation.
  - intended 10y ago
    Theres loads of competition for CL. Internationally many people have cut in on that space. I'd be more concerned that someone is going to use the likely roll back of NN in america to dethrone CL.
    - unicornporn 10y ago
      > Theres loads of competition for CL. Internationally many people have cut in on that space. Correct. Here in Stockholm no one knows about CL (even if there is one for our city at https://stockholm.craigslist.se/ https://stockholm.craigslist.se/). Just about all you can see there are some robot spam listings for medical cannabis. Over here https://www.blocket.se/ https://www.blocket.se/ has near monopoly position, even though it's quite expensive. They got here first, it's as simple as that. http://sv.shpock.com/ http://sv.shpock.com/ is trying hard to establish a presence, but it's seems to be going slow.
pcwalton 10y ago
> ability to run without JavaScript I highly doubt more than 1% of Craigslist's userbase cares about this. The reasons are simple: first mover advantage and network effects.
- johnbender 10y ago
  I read this (possibly wrongly) to be a proxy for "unencumbered page load speed" which is a feature that many users value beyond the 1% who care about noscript.
- Arcsech 10y ago
  If you said it that way, yeah. But it means that the site is nice to use on very low-end devices - you know, the sort used by people to whom the second-hand market is very important, because they can't afford high-end devices.
ulkram 10y ago
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.
- SN76477 10y ago
  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.
  - silencio 10y ago
    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.
GoodbyeEarl 10y ago
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".
- tsm 10y ago
  Vanilla forms just GET or POST to some server endpoint with all of the <input>s passed in as query parameters. Frameworks (e.g., Rails) put some syntactic sugar on it, but that's really all that's happening. If the form submission contains invalid input, it's customary to return to the form page (with all the values already filled out) and show a server-generated message about what went wrong. JS is absolutely not required for any of it.
  - GoodbyeEarl 10y ago
    Thank you! it is actually enlightening :) I think it's a little bit awkward to not use put, patch, delete... I wonder however if my server must follow the same technique, if not how to wire a delete endpoint to handle a form post and so on. I'll try to handle a form using only get and post sometime just to see how it works. Thank you!
    - flukus 10y ago
      Well you just made me feel old. For put/patch/delete you can just as easily wire different options to different URL's. We had URL's like /Foo/Delete?43. It may be awkward in a particular framework but it's about as simple as things get. I've always hated put/patch/delete because it tends to result in data centric UI's instead of workflow centric ones.
      - GoodbyeEarl 10y ago
        Hmm now that you mentioned I realized I've seen this pattern before but I've never given it a thought. I'll definitely try it sometime, it seems to work pretty well. BTW sorry for make you feel old, it was not my intention haha
1_2__3 10y ago
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.
jameshart 10y ago
Does craigslist's UI work really well without JS? I mean, sure, it looks lo-fi, but there's still a ton of script on most pages, and the submission process is definitely pretty dynamic. If anything, CL looks more like a relic of the DHTML era of 'designed for IE4' web design.
deftturtle 10y ago
You actually can't use Craigslist over Tor, so it's not anonymous. Also, your contact details can be leaked in their email relay system. If your name in your Gmail account is Jane Doe, the other person will receive an email from a Craigslist domain with your name as the sender... so just be careful.

vyrotek 10y ago

From what I understand, people started local garage sale groups on Facebook specifically to remove anonymity. It's a benefit for those people. Facebook is just taking what is already a massively popular use of their groups feature and officially supporting it. It won't replace craigslist but it will do just fine.

laurentdc 10y ago

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

wfn 10y ago
It certainly is for some (e.g. me and some people I know). I think quite a few people get pissed off at websites which do not have live content (it's live if it can't be cached; Craigslist content, e.g., can be cached) but require JS just to render the basic text. It doesn't help if those sites also make 100+ requests. And yes, some folks still prefer text-based browsers when possible. :) I do realize the latter make up quite a small percentage only, though...
christophilus 10y ago
As mentioned elsewhere, the average user probably doesn't know or care about JavaScript. They do know and care about simplicity and speed. Not having JavaScript (or only very little) often positively affects speed. (See Hacker News vs Redis on mobile for an example of this.)
MiddleEndian 10y ago
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.
- flukus 10y ago
  > or Gmail used to years ago Sure you weren't using the basic html version? Because I've been using gmail since it was invite only and it always had a loading spinner.
  - MiddleEndian 10y ago
    Perhaps I was. I used to use NoScript around the time I started using Gmail, but gave up at some point because I started having to disable it on almost every site I visited.
r00fus 10y ago
In the sense that no JS = better performance on slower PCs - yes, I'd say that's a selling point. My 70+ parents just listed and sold dozens of items in their spring cleaning - first time they used CL and they did it without my help. They might have had more problems if CL was "jazzed up".

37 10y ago

>If Craigslist decided to modernize today I misread this as "decided to monetize today" and interpreted an IPO. Has Craigslist ever thought about this? Any thoughts?

stephancoral 10y ago
Craigslist has nearly $300 million in profit and only around 30 employees. Why on earth would they ever want to go public?
- xyzzy4 10y ago
  Public stock is much more liquid.
  - aanm1988 10y ago
    Stock doesn't matter if you can just toss employees cash whenever you want.
  - trafficlight 10y ago
    Unlike those fat stacks of cash in their bank account.
- walterbell 10y ago
  What's their annual revenue?
  - stephancoral 10y ago
    $381 million in 2015. I'd be interested in seeing where the 81 mil goes
- appleiigs 10y ago
  Using EBay's P/E ratio of 21x, Craigslist owners have 2 options: 1. $300MM in profit each year, which has risk of going up or down. 2. Sell company for $6.3 billion ($300 x 21) and walk. Note: I don't have time to investigate why Bloomberg is telling me EBay PE ratio is 21, vs Google Finance is 5x.

Arizhel 10y ago

>Facebook is trying to move in on their territory for sure. Unfortunately, I don't think they will. Why "unfortunately"? This is a good thing. Facebook is horrible, in many different ways, and the last thing we need is to hand even more power over the internet to them. CL is "ugly", but it's fast and works great, and isn't filled with ads and tracking, something I definitely can't say about Facebook.

mynameisvlad 10y ago
Real competition in general is good, it'd force both products to improve.
- itomato 10y ago
  The only way Facebook could "improve" is to fade away completely.
  - ianai 10y ago
    I think facebook serves a purpose but I also agree with your statement. The last thing I want are more places relying on facebook. I deleted my facebook to get away from it. Huge "but" though: I did get value out of facebook when I was younger. It's for that reason that I think it's probably a good thing. Of course...there's also the ever present threat of a new social network growing up with another generation.
- intended 10y ago
  Theres loads of competition for CL. Internationally many people have cut in on that space. I'd be more concerned that someone is going to use the likely roll back of NN in america to dethrone CL.
  - unicornporn 10y ago
    > Theres loads of competition for CL. Internationally many people have cut in on that space. Correct. Here in Stockholm no one knows about CL (even if there is one for our city at https://stockholm.craigslist.se/ https://stockholm.craigslist.se/). Just about all you can see there are some robot spam listings for medical cannabis. Over here https://www.blocket.se/ https://www.blocket.se/ has near monopoly position, even though it's quite expensive. They got here first, it's as simple as that. http://sv.shpock.com/ http://sv.shpock.com/ is trying hard to establish a presence, but it's seems to be going slow.

pcwalton 10y ago

> ability to run without JavaScript I highly doubt more than 1% of Craigslist's userbase cares about this. The reasons are simple: first mover advantage and network effects.

johnbender 10y ago
I read this (possibly wrongly) to be a proxy for "unencumbered page load speed" which is a feature that many users value beyond the 1% who care about noscript.
Arcsech 10y ago
If you said it that way, yeah. But it means that the site is nice to use on very low-end devices - you know, the sort used by people to whom the second-hand market is very important, because they can't afford high-end devices.

ulkram 10y ago

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.

SN76477 10y ago
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.
- silencio 10y ago
  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.

GoodbyeEarl 10y ago

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".

tsm 10y ago
Vanilla forms just GET or POST to some server endpoint with all of the <input>s passed in as query parameters. Frameworks (e.g., Rails) put some syntactic sugar on it, but that's really all that's happening. If the form submission contains invalid input, it's customary to return to the form page (with all the values already filled out) and show a server-generated message about what went wrong. JS is absolutely not required for any of it.
- GoodbyeEarl 10y ago
  Thank you! it is actually enlightening :) I think it's a little bit awkward to not use put, patch, delete... I wonder however if my server must follow the same technique, if not how to wire a delete endpoint to handle a form post and so on. I'll try to handle a form using only get and post sometime just to see how it works. Thank you!
  - flukus 10y ago
    Well you just made me feel old. For put/patch/delete you can just as easily wire different options to different URL's. We had URL's like /Foo/Delete?43. It may be awkward in a particular framework but it's about as simple as things get. I've always hated put/patch/delete because it tends to result in data centric UI's instead of workflow centric ones.
    - GoodbyeEarl 10y ago
      Hmm now that you mentioned I realized I've seen this pattern before but I've never given it a thought. I'll definitely try it sometime, it seems to work pretty well. BTW sorry for make you feel old, it was not my intention haha

1_2__3 10y ago

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.

jameshart 10y ago

Does craigslist's UI work really well without JS? I mean, sure, it looks lo-fi, but there's still a ton of script on most pages, and the submission process is definitely pretty dynamic. If anything, CL looks more like a relic of the DHTML era of 'designed for IE4' web design.

deftturtle 10y ago

You actually can't use Craigslist over Tor, so it's not anonymous. Also, your contact details can be leaked in their email relay system. If your name in your Gmail account is Jane Doe, the other person will receive an email from a Craigslist domain with your name as the sender... so just be careful.