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Haha, I see what you did there. You confused UI with Usability. Craigslist is incredibly usable. Have you taken a look at Ebay lately? Does it look familiar? Th

Haha, I see what you did there. You confused UI with Usability. Craigslist is incredibly usable. Have you taken a look at Ebay lately? Does it look familiar? That's cos it hasn't significantly changed in 10 years. Is that because they don't care? Nope, it's because gradients and drop shadows make your product look better, but don't make it more usable. Craigslist is a utility, not a website. They care about keeping it useful not only for users today, but for users in 10 years. That's not something startups care about at all. Startups are looking to amass users and then sell. Craigslist cares not about such goals. Go ahead, get mad at their inflexibility. But then take a step back and think about what craigslist represents. And then wonder if you yourself would have the cajones to stick to your guns in todays startup market. I for one commend their ability to keep their product strong in the face of all the bells and whistles of web 2.0 or whatever it's called these days.

soup10 14y ago
I disagree, craigslist sucks. It's filled with spam and it's searching and sorting options could be way better. The only reason they don't have many competitors is because they have an information/platform monopoly. Just like many other tech companies, ebay and facebook come to mind as obvious examples.
SomeCallMeTim 14y ago
>You confused UI with Usability. I certainly don't confuse the two. I couldn't care less what Craigslist LOOKS like, but its usability is profoundly broken in some areas (Denver Metro, for example). The problem is that there's a Denver, Boulder, Colorado Springs, and Fort Collins Craigslist. For those of you in the Bay Area, that would be roughly like having a distinct San Francisco, San Rafael, San Jose, and Santa Cruz Craigslist. If you're in between those places, which one do you look at? You have to look at more than one. Even if you're IN one of those places, which one do you look at? Sometimes three or four, if it's something you're willing to drive an hour to buy. And if you're POSTING, where do you post? If you post a popular item to Boulder (because, say, you live in Boulder), then people in the next town over who only know about Denver won't see it, so you also have to post to Denver if you want everyone in a reasonable radius to see your item. Which means you have to violate Craigslist policies AND mess with your listing enough to get past its spam filter. The sad thing is they've fixed it to the 80% level in the Bay Area, where the whole (extended!) Bay Area (even Santa Cruz, which isn't really Bay Area) is on a single Craigslist site with sub-area filters, but they just leave it broken here. THIS is a usability problem. And honestly so is the lack of "map these results," for times when you want to see which ones are closest, or which ones you could stop by on your way to work, or whatever. It's not because it's not shiny or doesn't have gradients or drop shadows. It's because key features that I want from a classified site are sorely lacking.
bermanoid 14y ago
You can't view apartment search results on a fucking map. Are you really going to argue that the site is more usable without that very basic feature?
sprokolopolis 14y ago
Just because the site is simple in design, doesn't mean that it is built to be used efficiently. Craigslist, as is, is a usability nightmare. When I use the site, I am using it with various Greasemonkey scripts, Firefox extensions and 3rd party web apps to make their content easier to consume/see/understand/filter. These tools are the only reason that I can bare to use Craigslist. If I am searching for a bike, a simple script to show image thumbnails by every listing will let me see which listings interest me. This saves me time, because now I only have to open a few interesting links. I don't have to scour through many of text links, just to see if they interest me. The rentals section is constantly bombarded by spam and has very few filtering options. There is no way to exclude keywords. Boolean operators would greatly improve the usability of the site.
- prophetjohn 14y ago
  You can exclude keywords and there is a boolean OR operator: | The problem is that you have to enter some search query before you can use the negation operator. Also, protip to get past the spam in rentals section (Austin is holy crap bad about this): enter 'google' as your search term. This will only return ads that have an address specified and hence have the 'google maps' links. Plus, since you've entered a search term, you can filter out the locator who keeps spamming and screwing up your search by putting his phone number in the address section. Here's a query I might have used during my last apartment search. google downtown | central -"512-555-5555" -"CALL NOW" -"austin apartments NOW" etc.

soup10 14y ago

I disagree, craigslist sucks. It's filled with spam and it's searching and sorting options could be way better. The only reason they don't have many competitors is because they have an information/platform monopoly. Just like many other tech companies, ebay and facebook come to mind as obvious examples.

SomeCallMeTim 14y ago

>You confused UI with Usability. I certainly don't confuse the two. I couldn't care less what Craigslist LOOKS like, but its usability is profoundly broken in some areas (Denver Metro, for example). The problem is that there's a Denver, Boulder, Colorado Springs, and Fort Collins Craigslist. For those of you in the Bay Area, that would be roughly like having a distinct San Francisco, San Rafael, San Jose, and Santa Cruz Craigslist. If you're in between those places, which one do you look at? You have to look at more than one. Even if you're IN one of those places, which one do you look at? Sometimes three or four, if it's something you're willing to drive an hour to buy. And if you're POSTING, where do you post? If you post a popular item to Boulder (because, say, you live in Boulder), then people in the next town over who only know about Denver won't see it, so you also have to post to Denver if you want everyone in a reasonable radius to see your item. Which means you have to violate Craigslist policies AND mess with your listing enough to get past its spam filter. The sad thing is they've fixed it to the 80% level in the Bay Area, where the whole (extended!) Bay Area (even Santa Cruz, which isn't really Bay Area) is on a single Craigslist site with sub-area filters, but they just leave it broken here. THIS is a usability problem. And honestly so is the lack of "map these results," for times when you want to see which ones are closest, or which ones you could stop by on your way to work, or whatever. It's not because it's not shiny or doesn't have gradients or drop shadows. It's because key features that I want from a classified site are sorely lacking.

bermanoid 14y ago

You can't view apartment search results on a fucking map. Are you really going to argue that the site is more usable without that very basic feature?

sprokolopolis 14y ago

Just because the site is simple in design, doesn't mean that it is built to be used efficiently. Craigslist, as is, is a usability nightmare. When I use the site, I am using it with various Greasemonkey scripts, Firefox extensions and 3rd party web apps to make their content easier to consume/see/understand/filter. These tools are the only reason that I can bare to use Craigslist. If I am searching for a bike, a simple script to show image thumbnails by every listing will let me see which listings interest me. This saves me time, because now I only have to open a few interesting links. I don't have to scour through many of text links, just to see if they interest me. The rentals section is constantly bombarded by spam and has very few filtering options. There is no way to exclude keywords. Boolean operators would greatly improve the usability of the site.

prophetjohn 14y ago
You can exclude keywords and there is a boolean OR operator: | The problem is that you have to enter some search query before you can use the negation operator. Also, protip to get past the spam in rentals section (Austin is holy crap bad about this): enter 'google' as your search term. This will only return ads that have an address specified and hence have the 'google maps' links. Plus, since you've entered a search term, you can filter out the locator who keeps spamming and screwing up your search by putting his phone number in the address section. Here's a query I might have used during my last apartment search. google downtown | central -"512-555-5555" -"CALL NOW" -"austin apartments NOW" etc.