Craigslist isn't a charity. It is sad that they don't innovate, but it's not the responsibility of the incumbents to make the job of their would-be replacements easier. In fact that's bad business.<p>It would be nice if Craigslist created a platform that others could build on. Something like Facebook. <a href="http://apps.craigslist.org/mapper" rel="nofollow">http://apps.craigslist.org/mapper</a>. I bet people would build things on their data <i>for free</i> even without any way of making money off it.
Not very convincing. We all know the value that Padmapper brings to apartment seekers. What's harder to explain is what (if any) value Padmapper brings to Craigslist. That's really the case you'd have to make to get Craigslist to reconsider.<p>Also, as much as I hate to say this, the “they didn’t do anything wrong” argument is very weak. Scraping the site explicitly goes against Craigslist’s TOS:<p><i>Any copying, aggregation, display, distribution, performance or derivative use of craigslist or any content posted on craigslist whether done directly or through intermediaries (including but not limited to by means of spiders, robots, crawlers, scrapers, framing, iframes or RSS feeds) is prohibited.</i>
I don't understand the justification for "saving" padmapper.<p>Padmapper's goal is to have Craigslist subsidize their data until they grow large enough to challenge Craiglist's business.<p>Craigslist would be stupid to let them do this.<p>Instead, why don't you write a letter to craigslist asking for similar functionality?
The uproar over this is ridiculous. Craigslist is free to choose who can consume their data.<p>If you choose to build a platform that is dependent on third-party data and APIs, then you choose to accept whatever choices those third parties make that could possibly affect your application.<p>The whole "craigslist doesn't innovate" argument is moot. If they were selling buggy whips at a million dollar revenue rate a month, someone out there would attempt to get in that same business, copy it, mimik it, resell it, etc.<p>Innovators create stuff that people want to copy or leach off of. Poseurs copy and leach off of innovators.
Craigslist does not allow scraping. Beg for help and for support for breaking their rules elsewhere. This is Hacker News, not "help me retain a business model after I broke rules" central.<p>You could alternatively hire people to spam them with nice requests to reconsider.
"I just found out a few moments ago that Craigslist has sent a cease and desist to one of the most valuable sites for apartment renters <i></i>ON THE PLANET<i></i>, Padmapper." (emphasis mine)<p>Never heard of the site. Curious after this introduction I opened the site, went to my chosen hometown of Cologne, DE (1 mil people). Map's empty. Berlin, maybe? Nope. Tel Aviv, IL? Nothing.<p>So for all the places I care about on this very planet the service doesn't seem to work for me. That's not to slight their service at all, padmapper might be a great service. But either they depended on craigslist too much (and that's why it's barren now for me) or the writer of that blog post should tone down his introduction a bit. Is it planet or US now?
Dear Craiglist, please let Padmapper continue to scrape your data for free because I find Padmapper super useful and much better than your shitty site. I'm not going to address your interests at all, because they are directly threatened by the existence of Padmapper. In fact, I'm surprised that you haven't shut down Padmapper a year ago.
Here's mine:<p>Jim and Craig,<p>Padmapper saved me dozens of hours looking for apartments vs. using the Craigslist UI. If you extrapolate this to your entire user base, padmapper can save your users millions of hours each year. That's the equivalent of several human lifetimes saved that can be spent on other pursuits.<p>Padmapper saves lives. Please unblock them and open your data API.<p>-Jacob<p>(Of course, Craigslist is an evil monopoly despite their happy granola reputation, so I don't expect them to listen)
"Save Padmapper" seems to be selling the company short given the diverse set of data sources and partnerships they have. I hope Craigslist comes around but my bet is PadMapper will be more than fine regardless.
The real douche bag move is to wait for something to become really successful and pervasive before sending the cease and desist. Padmapper has been around for a long time and now they decide to drop the hammer. Fuck craigslist.
This really sucks. Moving is extremely stressful. Apartment hunting is very difficult and time consuming. I was elated when I stumbled on padmapper. I'm really disappointed that it won't be available next time I move.
I have a feeling all this will be somewhat moot anyway. If Padmapper is as popular as it appears to be, then many rental companies will go straight to them and submit their units in addition to CL.
If Padmapper is really going to die without the addition of Craigslist real estate listings, then why would Craiglist want to allow them to allow them?<p>Padmapper is Craigslist's competitor.
The really shameful part is that CL could easily implement this feature on their own with very little effort, but they won't. Someone in another thread surmised that perhaps CL is planning to roll out a mapping tool on their own. If that's the case, it's really user-hostile to kill the working tool before they replace it with something developed in-house.
What about making PadMapper client-side, including the Craigslist scraping? It'd have to be done on each request, which would hurt performance, but it may be a way of staying within their TOS (not sure if they have a provision against that; I don't use craigslist so haven't read their TOS).
Why haven't they done this more often? Many startups are trying to chip away at CL's business. <a href="http://www.mdaniels.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/tumblr_kwkfi5tqEi1qzqh0wo1_500.png" rel="nofollow">http://www.mdaniels.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/tumblr_kw...</a>
First LinkedIn and now CL follow the suit. What message are they trying to give to developer community?<p>I think the time is coming that developers will have to "invent" their own datasources rather than banking on such _giants_
So we need to save Padmapper which scrapes data from Craigslist.<p>That is fine with me, but let me asks this: if I start a web site which scrape all Craigslist data would you guys back me up? If not, why not?
Question: why can't Padmapper simply run as a browser plugin on the user's PC? From Craigslist's point of view, it would just look like a user who reads <i>all</i> the ads.
Craig is just a customer service rep. He isn't in charge of Craigslist anymore. Jim Buckmaster is the guy you want to speak to. Check out the documentary, it's pretty good.
Glad I was able to use Padmapper before this happened. Surfing through raw Craigslist entries is surely what you're forced to do in one of the circles of hell.
This is unfortunate but I'm reminded of this discussion from just over a week ago:<p>"Don't build your house on someone else's platform" <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4093796" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4093796</a>