The fact that they haven't done the things you describe doesn't change the fact that craigslist is a terrible product.
It is clogged with spam. Clever types of spam, often ones that crowdsource their content by mining previously legit posts. Since there are no reputation mechanisms to speak of, it's far too easy to waste your time with stuff that's either spam or a scam.
Meanwhile, data visualization has progressed dramatically in the last decade. craigslist remains in 2001. Wading through apartment listings, for example, is miserable, and there are almost no mechanisms in place to encourage that very basic information is communicated by people listing their properties.
craigslist can keep its hideous, serifed-out visual design as long as it wants. The big beef here isn't how craigslist looks – it's how it works.
The fact your dog doesn't shit on your pillow doesn't excuse his taking a dump in your shoes every day.
Not sure if reputation mechanisms would work in a site where people often post just once, and that doesn't require creating a user account in order to post.
I would love it if CL's sublet section would take some hints from AirBnB. That said, CL has a much higher volume of traffic and more pressing problems - and my experience is that ABB works great in smaller markets but is as almost bad as CL in a market like NYC.
CL isn't perfect. But if most of the dogs hyped in the various dog blogs would be shitting on pillows on a regular basis, the ones that wouldn't would stand out.
> Not sure if reputation mechanisms would work in a site where people often post just once, and that doesn't require creating a user account in order to post.
That's a weird premise to me. If you post an apartment, you could just as easily also want to find a girlfriend or buy a used bike or avail yourself of any of craigslist's other categories. That's their big value, after all – everything under one roof.
The fact that craigslist doesn't require a user account to post is an extremely dubious product decision at this stage.
Data visualizations have progressed in almost all craigslist competitors (and mashups), but visualizations won't be the death of craigslist. The battleground is content. Sure there's plenty of spam and scams, but people love craiglist listings because there is so much unique content.
One major contributor to craiglist becoming so successful as a website is essentially the ease of posting content. That lead to lots of content and not coincidentally lots of traffic, but it also means that much of the data is unstructured. Creating more intelligent ways to interact with data requires some structure, but the easiest way to structure data is to complicate the listing creation process. When someone figures out a great balance and has enough search traffic to keep listers coming back, craigslist will have a real competitor.
Wading through apartment listings, for example, is miserable, and there are almost no mechanisms in place to encourage that very basic information is communicated by people listing their properties.
Where is a good place to look for apartments? Most "apartment search" sites that look prettier than CL usually are cluttered with a high ads to info ratio, inaccurate info and/or are slow to load/navigate...
A nit to pick, since elai has already provided some good examples.
> Most "apartment search" sites that look prettier...
None of these gripes are about appearance except inasmuch as appearance reflects functionality. craigslist is ugly, but that's not the problem. craigslist doesn't work well. I don't want it to look different. I want it to work differently.
A competing site could look much prettier than craigslist and still work no better.
I'm not sure how you use Craigslist but I've primarily used the site to sell a few big ticket items - and it flat out works. After listing a couple of cars on some larger, more feature rich sites for several weeks without any traction, I listed on Craigslist, received multiple inquiries from day one, and sold within 10 days. Granted, this has more to do with the scale of the user base than the actual product, but I'm not sure you can completely separate those two aspects in this business space.
My buddy is 40 years old, not very technical, but he's one hell of a mechanic. He's been making his living off buying and selling cars off of CL since the recession started. Just an anecdote. I'm not sure an "improved UI" would help him. So many entrepreneurs are mad at CL for whatever reason, but the main one seems to be jealousy. They would rather ruin it than allow it to continue.
I found that nearly every used car I looked at on CL was either being resold by small-time "car dealers" or bought up by these same people. It was nearly impossible to find a good used car so I finally leased a new one instead.
i don't think it's just envy that makes entrepreneurs mad. CL is also quite litigious (but in a hypocritical capricious way), which is generally out of step with the rest of data-is-free, api-driven world.
It sounds like you want CL to specialize in a niche, which is something they're not really setup to do, nor is it their claim to fame. They are a firehouse of classifieds information, that's why a lot of people like them.
They could mine the data they have a bit more, but where do they stop? Should they let you select computers for sale by CPU type(newegg)? Cars by model/make/warrant/color(autotrader.com)? Dates by body measurements/race/religion/compatibility questions(okcupid.com)? Should their forums have a karma system(hacker news)? There is a reason they are called "Craig's List" & not "Craig's Apartments", "Craig's Cars", "Craig's Dating" or "Craig's Computers".
Perhaps they should try harder on the spam, but redesigning how they operate could alienate a considerable portion of their community who like the simplicity & popularity of the site.
I"m partial to apartmentratings.com. Most rental sites earn their money from the apartments so they are not allowed to show you any negative info, meaning no user generated content. apartmentratings.com is a pariah in the industry because they actually let real people give their opinions.
Yelp is also good. I've read the reviews for my building and they are basically correct -- the staff used to be idiots, the walls are paper-thin, and the appliances are pieces of shit. Yup, pretty much.
i have a friend who worked there. he said they had a foot high stack of letters from apartments threatening to sue them because they refused to delete reviews.
I too wish I had a shitty product like that. However:
> And I even use it regularly to find stuff I want, locally, and cheap.
Are you really successful at that, though? 9 times out of 10 when I use craigslist the transaction is a horrible experience--for example:
- the buyer of an item claims it, then flakes out
- the seller of an item jacks up the price at the last
minute, when I'm there in person, saying, "oh well
there are 5 other people that want it"
- potential rideshare flakes out, or changes plans at
the last minute
- potential landlord turns out to be unreliable
The one area where I have had great success with craigslist is hiring, which I suspect is due to craigslist charging for job listings (which keeps the bar high).
Like I said, I'm successful at finding things I'm looking for.
In the last month, for instance, I've purchased:
-- a pressure washer (had it in my garage within 90 mins of searching)
-- an industrial grade hedge trimmer
-- 4 dock floats
-- a folding swimming ladder
The first three I found looking, the fourth I found by placing a "looking for" add myself.
Sure, I've had shitty experiences with Craigslist, by far the worst was when I was selling a truck. I had a lot of moronic callers and a couple of no-shows, but I also ended up selling it for good cash to a respectful guy.
The best bet in handling the bad parts was basically saying "sorry, not interested in selling it to you" when I get the sense that the other end of the call was a flake or not worth wasting time on. Sure, pissed off some of them, but I like to think I have a reasonable ability to read people, and wasn't desperate enough to sell the truck that I felt obligated to follow through with every potential buyer.
In the end, I'd rather deal with that crap than a dealership any day.
Just use an RSS reader and do some data processing. It's a small price to pay when the content (listings) come free. I think we begin to take that for granted, and start to get upset when our free cake isn't ALSO 6 tiers and made of exotic Swiss chocolates.
Sure, a tool that requires skillful end-users isn't one destined for great things and world domination (example: emacs) but that doesn't mean it has no value.
Right - it's so terrible nobody uses it -all those other awesome sites out there are just taking over then, right?
Craigslist is doomed?
It's obviously a highly successful product. The model is simple, IIRC from articles past, the operating cost is minimal for the size of the userbase, it takes very little staff to actually run it, microscopically little compared to other sites that do far, far less.
If everyone is so keen on saying there's a better way to do property listings - go build it.
It is clogged with spam. Clever types of spam, often ones that crowdsource their content by mining previously legit posts. Since there are no reputation mechanisms to speak of, it's far too easy to waste your time with stuff that's either spam or a scam.
Meanwhile, data visualization has progressed dramatically in the last decade. craigslist remains in 2001. Wading through apartment listings, for example, is miserable, and there are almost no mechanisms in place to encourage that very basic information is communicated by people listing their properties.
craigslist can keep its hideous, serifed-out visual design as long as it wants. The big beef here isn't how craigslist looks – it's how it works.
The fact your dog doesn't shit on your pillow doesn't excuse his taking a dump in your shoes every day.