Why Craigslist needs to die

Craigslist is successful because it's awesome.<p>The author of this article complains about the "lack of any sophistication in the search" - well thanks to their dead-simple and very functional search available as an RSS feed, I always know instantly when something I'm looking for is locally available in my city.<p><i>absence of any form of user reputation</i> - who cares when you are dealing locally, in cash?<p><i>the unavailability of map views</i> - nobody cares; craigslist is centered around urban areas, and when urban people look for apartments they usually know the neighborhood. Plus a map is 1 click away.<p><i>lack of an API</i> - nobody cares. Not every website needs an API. The author claims that no one can build services on top of craigslist, but that's not true. They have RSS, and that gives access to practically all the data they have.<p>To anyone who wants to build a Craigslist competitor, I wish them the best of luck; if you build something better, it truly has a chance to succeed. But to claim that Craigslist is a non-functional monopolistic website that's holding back progress in the world of online classifieds is a bunch of BS.<p>One other thing: If a company did come along and build a site that killed craigslist, you can bet that as soon as CL is gone, the new site will start to become more aggressive with their marketing, put banner ads everywhere and start to do spammy things. I think it's a blessing that the biggest classified ad site in the US is run by a guy who cares more about user-experience than money.

Oh please. His main complaint is that Craigslist isn't "doing more."<p>Why should it? Do the users like it as is? Yes (with some exceptions, of course). Then they don't have to do more.<p>If someone thinks they can do better, no one is stopping them. This is a really weak argument.

I'm not sure the word "monopoly" means what this person thinks it means. Craigslist doesn't have a monopoly; in fact, the market for the service Craigslist provides is dominated by <i>other</i> providers. Craiglist is simply the best, most powerful provider.<p>As a result, if Craigslist was really doing everyone a disservice by not implementing this guy's feature wish list, they'd lose market share to a competitor that actually implemented them. The post tacitly concedes that point by cheering on YC's alleged effort to fund a Craigslist competitor, thus contradicting its own thesis.<p>The problem with these feature wishlists for Craigslist is that the site <i>works</i>. This particular wishlist is particularly funny, because it consists largely of things that eBay provides --- reputation, semantic search --- without acknowledging that Craigslist currently works better than eBay.

Craig Newmark reminds me a little of Markus Frind. Each comes across as not being interested in building their business beyond their huge initial success. However un-motivated they appear to be, change happens and they still manage to change the online world by simply <i>not</i> doing things that most people think they <i>should</i> be doing (like this joker)

Beyond the inflammatory headline, the author lost all credibility with <i>"Craigslist is what it is because the site got lucky"</i>

Why such articles are never written by people who have built something bigger or better than what they complain about?

They need an API, badly. Very dumb of them not to have one already. It would be a huge value add to their service. I don't know what's the problem. Either they dont have the technical resources (unlikely), or they've made a conscience decision not to provide one.<p>I think the biggest problem with Craigslist is they seem like they don't give a shit about their own site. May or may not be true, but it's definitely the perception of a lot of entrepreneurs who envy their success, and are frustrated by their lack of innovation.

I wonder how much a hit Craiglists would take if it removed, "Random encounters," and such themed categories.<p>It's the Internet's porn for females; all text!

But they could have an api and let others build more apps and make CL convenient/better where it isn't. On a more fundamental level, competition is good and CL does not have a competitor that can match its reach and scope. This is partly because CL is useful, but its also partly because of their huge network effect. It would be good to have at least one other competitor in this space.

A world with a Craig's List is better than a world without one. But it does seem like we could use at least a couple more similar sites.