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the "ebay meets dating" impression is not correct. Craigslist is closer to an "Online Classified Ads" which is popular for posting jobs, apartment rentals, car
by dbecker 14y ago
the "ebay meets dating" impression is not correct. Craigslist is closer to an "Online Classified Ads" which is popular for posting jobs, apartment rentals, cars, sporting equipment, musical instruments, and pretty much everything else you might post in a classified ad.
I'm told it is one of the 100 most popular sites on the internet (and one of the 50 most popular in the US).
One of the reasons people feel strongly about it the platform nature. If you don't like the Craigslist interface for finding apartments, you don't have much choice. That is where everyone lists their apartments. Similarly, it is the first place everyone lists apartments because it is widely known that this is where users check.
For that reason, it's been hard for competitors to get any traction... even when the competitor has better technology.
- ralfn 14y agoAlright. That sounds very anti competitive. And if they truly have a monopoly likely illegal as well. I really wish, we had proper laws to deal with all these vendor lockin tricks. Its as if the free market, without proper regulation just ends up promoting innovation in loopholes that give an unfair advantage. Everyone wants to be a cable company these days, and be selling access to customers. Instead of contributing something of actual value themselves, they just want to tax others when they do. Hijack the customer, and be the middle man. They all essentially implement the same bussiness model as the mob.
- zopa 14y agoIt's not really anti-competitive, and it's very unlikely to be illegal. It's just a fairly classic natural monopoly. There's only likely to be one major classified ad company, because advertisers want to use the site with the most users, and users want to use the site with the most classified ads. That's hard for a competitor to break into, not because of anticompetitive behavior by Craigslist, but because of the nature of the market. As for the law, the general rule of thumb, in the US at least, is that it's not illegal to have a monopoly, but it is illegal to use your monopoly to dominate a second market.
- ralfn 14y agoIs it not abuse of your monopoly if you demand that their suppliers do not supply competitors? Because thats essentially what this "exclusive" liscence entails?
- alttab 14y agoI read it as this posting is exclusive. I can make a similar posting somewhere else. Sure, I can't copy-pasta, but if CraigsList thinks that because I post on their site that I can't post it on other sites as well I would LOVE to see them try to sue me.
- ralfn 14y agoYou cant copy pasta your own content. I totally agree though: this will never hold up in court. If they want to "own" user submitted content, they need a signature. Just putting some terms up will not suffice, unless the site "sell us your exclusive content" with big "make CL own this content" buttons.
- nathan_long 14y ago>> it's been hard for competitors to get any traction... even when the competitor has better technology. This. CraigsList's search features for cars are abysmal. AutoTrader.com, on the other hand, lets you do awesome stuff like "find me a Toyota or Honda sedan costing less than $12,000 within 15 miles of me", save that search, and get email alerts when new matches come in. But in my market, all the sellers were on Craigslist. Sucky network effects.