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Craigslist always seemed like a good candidate to have its wings clipped someday. CL works because it's the most widely used classified in the States, the desig
by lionhearted 18y ago
Craigslist always seemed like a good candidate to have its wings clipped someday. CL works because it's the most widely used classified in the States, the design doesn't get in the way, and it's free. But aside from minor redesigns, the site is stagnant. Certainly, CL isn't the best and final way to do classifieds online?
While CL has the network effects going on, the issue is that cross-posting an ad isn't that much effort. For instance, Recycler is big in LA, and I looked at both Recycler and CL side by side when looking for a car. I even saw a couple of the same ads posted on both sites.
So if a competitor builds a viable new site that grows, you'll see people use both until CL evolves or gets relegated to second tier.
I will say - I do like Craigslist, it seems like the founder and staff there are nice people, and I've used it for a few things and it worked well enough. I just think once someone gets classifieds more right and builds the userbase, people will look back and say, "Damn... I can't believe we used to Craigslist all those years when it didn't have xyz, abc, or def, and it had all those ghi problems that we just took for granted."