8 ms·

The fact that they haven't done the things you describe doesn't change the fact that craigslist is a terrible product. It is clogged with spam. Clever types of

The fact that they haven't done the things you describe doesn't change the fact that craigslist is a terrible product. It is clogged with spam. Clever types of spam, often ones that crowdsource their content by mining previously legit posts. Since there are no reputation mechanisms to speak of, it's far too easy to waste your time with stuff that's either spam or a scam. Meanwhile, data visualization has progressed dramatically in the last decade. craigslist remains in 2001. Wading through apartment listings, for example, is miserable, and there are almost no mechanisms in place to encourage that very basic information is communicated by people listing their properties. craigslist can keep its hideous, serifed-out visual design as long as it wants. The big beef here isn't how craigslist looks – it's how it works. The fact your dog doesn't shit on your pillow doesn't excuse his taking a dump in your shoes every day.

nir 16y ago
Not sure if reputation mechanisms would work in a site where people often post just once, and that doesn't require creating a user account in order to post. I would love it if CL's sublet section would take some hints from AirBnB. That said, CL has a much higher volume of traffic and more pressing problems - and my experience is that ABB works great in smaller markets but is as almost bad as CL in a market like NYC. CL isn't perfect. But if most of the dogs hyped in the various dog blogs would be shitting on pillows on a regular basis, the ones that wouldn't would stand out.
- danilocampos 16y ago
  > Not sure if reputation mechanisms would work in a site where people often post just once, and that doesn't require creating a user account in order to post. That's a weird premise to me. If you post an apartment, you could just as easily also want to find a girlfriend or buy a used bike or avail yourself of any of craigslist's other categories. That's their big value, after all – everything under one roof. The fact that craigslist doesn't require a user account to post is an extremely dubious product decision at this stage.
  - ricarr 16y ago
    "The fact that craigslist doesn't require a user account to post is an extremely dubious product decision at this stage." I can see your point of view, but this user likes the use and forget it aspect of CL. Further, typically (for me at least) all CL initiated interactions -- mainly apts. and job related for me -- are all in person, and so far have presented no issues. Obviously anything can be improved, but the modality of interaction with CL very much defines CL and (imo) is a major factor contributing to its popularity. As a programmer, CL is entirely unlike what I (astronaut) would have developed. That's another aspect that attracts me to the site. A quite effective counter argument to my approach to designing software. Simple, and practical. Would you believe it has contributed to my rethinking my approach to software design in context of mass utility services?
Klinky 16y ago
Wading through apartment listings, for example, is miserable, and there are almost no mechanisms in place to encourage that very basic information is communicated by people listing their properties. Where is a good place to look for apartments? Most "apartment search" sites that look prettier than CL usually are cluttered with a high ads to info ratio, inaccurate info and/or are slow to load/navigate...
- elai 16y ago
  padmapper.com gets info from craigslist and others. hotpads.com is also good.
  - devinfoley 16y ago
    Also craiggers.com
    - helpmehelpyou 16y ago
      http://craiggers.com http://craiggers.com
      - a5seo 16y ago
        for now... CL will shut them down. or maybe they won't. investing your time in enhancing their data is a complete crapshoot.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
- danilocampos 16y ago
  A nit to pick, since elai has already provided some good examples. > Most "apartment search" sites that look prettier... None of these gripes are about appearance except inasmuch as appearance reflects functionality. craigslist is ugly, but that's not the problem. craigslist doesn't work well. I don't want it to look different. I want it to work differently. A competing site could look much prettier than craigslist and still work no better.
r0s 16y ago
> It is clogged with spam. Clever types of spam, often ones that crowdsource their content by mining previously legit posts. And which popular services are immune to this?
drp 16y ago
Data visualizations have progressed in almost all craigslist competitors (and mashups), but visualizations won't be the death of craigslist. The battleground is content. Sure there's plenty of spam and scams, but people love craiglist listings because there is so much unique content. One major contributor to craiglist becoming so successful as a website is essentially the ease of posting content. That lead to lots of content and not coincidentally lots of traffic, but it also means that much of the data is unstructured. Creating more intelligent ways to interact with data requires some structure, but the easiest way to structure data is to complicate the listing creation process. When someone figures out a great balance and has enough search traffic to keep listers coming back, craigslist will have a real competitor.
- a5seo 16y ago
  seriously??? can your mom successfully post and ad on CL, including verifying her email? and can she bold the important words in the ad? even the newspaper classifieds, as dumb as they were, made that easy for the most basic user.
dedward 16y ago
Right - it's so terrible nobody uses it -all those other awesome sites out there are just taking over then, right? Craigslist is doomed? It's obviously a highly successful product. The model is simple, IIRC from articles past, the operating cost is minimal for the size of the userbase, it takes very little staff to actually run it, microscopically little compared to other sites that do far, far less. If everyone is so keen on saying there's a better way to do property listings - go build it.
sliverstorm 16y ago
Just use an RSS reader and do some data processing. It's a small price to pay when the content (listings) come free. I think we begin to take that for granted, and start to get upset when our free cake isn't ALSO 6 tiers and made of exotic Swiss chocolates. Sure, a tool that requires skillful end-users isn't one destined for great things and world domination (example: emacs) but that doesn't mean it has no value.
nettdata 16y ago
Yeah, it's so bad that everyone uses it and it's making $50m a year. I wish I had a shitty product like that. And I even use it regularly to find stuff I want, locally, and cheap. The bastards.
- storborg 16y ago
  I too wish I had a shitty product like that. However: > And I even use it regularly to find stuff I want, locally, and cheap. Are you really successful at that, though? 9 times out of 10 when I use craigslist the transaction is a horrible experience--for example: - the buyer of an item claims it, then flakes out - the seller of an item jacks up the price at the last minute, when I'm there in person, saying, "oh well there are 5 other people that want it" - potential rideshare flakes out, or changes plans at the last minute - potential landlord turns out to be unreliable The one area where I have had great success with craigslist is hiring, which I suspect is due to craigslist charging for job listings (which keeps the bar high).
  - nettdata 16y ago
    Like I said, I'm successful at finding things I'm looking for. In the last month, for instance, I've purchased: -- a pressure washer (had it in my garage within 90 mins of searching) -- an industrial grade hedge trimmer -- 4 dock floats -- a folding swimming ladder The first three I found looking, the fourth I found by placing a "looking for" add myself. Sure, I've had shitty experiences with Craigslist, by far the worst was when I was selling a truck. I had a lot of moronic callers and a couple of no-shows, but I also ended up selling it for good cash to a respectful guy. The best bet in handling the bad parts was basically saying "sorry, not interested in selling it to you" when I get the sense that the other end of the call was a flake or not worth wasting time on. Sure, pissed off some of them, but I like to think I have a reasonable ability to read people, and wasn't desperate enough to sell the truck that I felt obligated to follow through with every potential buyer. In the end, I'd rather deal with that crap than a dealership any day.
bostonvaulter2 16y ago
If you want better apartment searching you should really try out padmapper. They crawl craigslist and post them on a google map. http://www.padmapper.com/ http://www.padmapper.com/

nir 16y ago

Not sure if reputation mechanisms would work in a site where people often post just once, and that doesn't require creating a user account in order to post. I would love it if CL's sublet section would take some hints from AirBnB. That said, CL has a much higher volume of traffic and more pressing problems - and my experience is that ABB works great in smaller markets but is as almost bad as CL in a market like NYC. CL isn't perfect. But if most of the dogs hyped in the various dog blogs would be shitting on pillows on a regular basis, the ones that wouldn't would stand out.

danilocampos 16y ago
> Not sure if reputation mechanisms would work in a site where people often post just once, and that doesn't require creating a user account in order to post. That's a weird premise to me. If you post an apartment, you could just as easily also want to find a girlfriend or buy a used bike or avail yourself of any of craigslist's other categories. That's their big value, after all – everything under one roof. The fact that craigslist doesn't require a user account to post is an extremely dubious product decision at this stage.
- ricarr 16y ago
  "The fact that craigslist doesn't require a user account to post is an extremely dubious product decision at this stage." I can see your point of view, but this user likes the use and forget it aspect of CL. Further, typically (for me at least) all CL initiated interactions -- mainly apts. and job related for me -- are all in person, and so far have presented no issues. Obviously anything can be improved, but the modality of interaction with CL very much defines CL and (imo) is a major factor contributing to its popularity. As a programmer, CL is entirely unlike what I (astronaut) would have developed. That's another aspect that attracts me to the site. A quite effective counter argument to my approach to designing software. Simple, and practical. Would you believe it has contributed to my rethinking my approach to software design in context of mass utility services?

Klinky 16y ago

Wading through apartment listings, for example, is miserable, and there are almost no mechanisms in place to encourage that very basic information is communicated by people listing their properties. Where is a good place to look for apartments? Most "apartment search" sites that look prettier than CL usually are cluttered with a high ads to info ratio, inaccurate info and/or are slow to load/navigate...

elai 16y ago
padmapper.com gets info from craigslist and others. hotpads.com is also good.
- devinfoley 16y ago
  Also craiggers.com
  - helpmehelpyou 16y ago
    http://craiggers.com http://craiggers.com
    - a5seo 16y ago
      for now... CL will shut them down. or maybe they won't. investing your time in enhancing their data is a complete crapshoot.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
danilocampos 16y ago
A nit to pick, since elai has already provided some good examples. > Most "apartment search" sites that look prettier... None of these gripes are about appearance except inasmuch as appearance reflects functionality. craigslist is ugly, but that's not the problem. craigslist doesn't work well. I don't want it to look different. I want it to work differently. A competing site could look much prettier than craigslist and still work no better.

r0s 16y ago

> It is clogged with spam. Clever types of spam, often ones that crowdsource their content by mining previously legit posts. And which popular services are immune to this?

drp 16y ago

Data visualizations have progressed in almost all craigslist competitors (and mashups), but visualizations won't be the death of craigslist. The battleground is content. Sure there's plenty of spam and scams, but people love craiglist listings because there is so much unique content. One major contributor to craiglist becoming so successful as a website is essentially the ease of posting content. That lead to lots of content and not coincidentally lots of traffic, but it also means that much of the data is unstructured. Creating more intelligent ways to interact with data requires some structure, but the easiest way to structure data is to complicate the listing creation process. When someone figures out a great balance and has enough search traffic to keep listers coming back, craigslist will have a real competitor.

a5seo 16y ago
seriously??? can your mom successfully post and ad on CL, including verifying her email? and can she bold the important words in the ad? even the newspaper classifieds, as dumb as they were, made that easy for the most basic user.

dedward 16y ago

Right - it's so terrible nobody uses it -all those other awesome sites out there are just taking over then, right? Craigslist is doomed? It's obviously a highly successful product. The model is simple, IIRC from articles past, the operating cost is minimal for the size of the userbase, it takes very little staff to actually run it, microscopically little compared to other sites that do far, far less. If everyone is so keen on saying there's a better way to do property listings - go build it.

sliverstorm 16y ago

Just use an RSS reader and do some data processing. It's a small price to pay when the content (listings) come free. I think we begin to take that for granted, and start to get upset when our free cake isn't ALSO 6 tiers and made of exotic Swiss chocolates. Sure, a tool that requires skillful end-users isn't one destined for great things and world domination (example: emacs) but that doesn't mean it has no value.

nettdata 16y ago

Yeah, it's so bad that everyone uses it and it's making $50m a year. I wish I had a shitty product like that. And I even use it regularly to find stuff I want, locally, and cheap. The bastards.

storborg 16y ago
I too wish I had a shitty product like that. However: > And I even use it regularly to find stuff I want, locally, and cheap. Are you really successful at that, though? 9 times out of 10 when I use craigslist the transaction is a horrible experience--for example: - the buyer of an item claims it, then flakes out - the seller of an item jacks up the price at the last minute, when I'm there in person, saying, "oh well there are 5 other people that want it" - potential rideshare flakes out, or changes plans at the last minute - potential landlord turns out to be unreliable The one area where I have had great success with craigslist is hiring, which I suspect is due to craigslist charging for job listings (which keeps the bar high).
- nettdata 16y ago
  Like I said, I'm successful at finding things I'm looking for. In the last month, for instance, I've purchased: -- a pressure washer (had it in my garage within 90 mins of searching) -- an industrial grade hedge trimmer -- 4 dock floats -- a folding swimming ladder The first three I found looking, the fourth I found by placing a "looking for" add myself. Sure, I've had shitty experiences with Craigslist, by far the worst was when I was selling a truck. I had a lot of moronic callers and a couple of no-shows, but I also ended up selling it for good cash to a respectful guy. The best bet in handling the bad parts was basically saying "sorry, not interested in selling it to you" when I get the sense that the other end of the call was a flake or not worth wasting time on. Sure, pissed off some of them, but I like to think I have a reasonable ability to read people, and wasn't desperate enough to sell the truck that I felt obligated to follow through with every potential buyer. In the end, I'd rather deal with that crap than a dealership any day.

bostonvaulter2 16y ago

If you want better apartment searching you should really try out padmapper. They crawl craigslist and post them on a google map. http://www.padmapper.com/ http://www.padmapper.com/