This guy's got a point:

http://roundabout101.blogspot.com/2009/01/is-craigslist-rotting-on-vine.html

Seems like building a better craigslist shouldn't be all that hard.

building it,  easy.  getting millions of people to use it as their defacto newspaper?  somewhat harder.



speaking of which, have you checked your email recently?

"getting millions of people to use it as their defacto newspaper?"

Make it really easy.  Co-op craigslist -- allow people to post on both sites with one single form.  But then offer better search, categories, etc.

yeah, but no, its harder than that.  there are dozens of craigslist replacements out there already.


its the network effect, and that takes a while to beat, you have to have the better product at the right time.


either that or just screen scrap all of craigslist products and display them on your own site plus your own, that would also do it, and there is almost no way that craigslist could win the resulting arms race except by throwing their interface entirely out the window to stop you, and thereby alienating their users.

of course their users will hate you as well, for causing craislist to commit suicide, so you wont *win* as such, but you will bankrupt craigslist which might be kind of fun.

CL got in early, and got in good. It would cost gazillions in marketing to get on top of them, if it could be done at all.

Why would you want to?

There are seemingly much better versions of craigslist out there...and most have failed miserably, despite having all of the features the poster describes.

Read this article - http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090101/and-the-money-comes-rolling-in.html

What struck me most was the comment about the technically laughable image system for the site, giving profiles with gangly, distorted pictures. While it wasn't intentional, the end result is possibly that people click through to profiles just to see better pictures, which in the end is a boost for the site, and in a strange way that broken implementation may have helped the site be such a success.

The amazing deficiencies of Craigslist are also some of the reasons it got to where it is today. Strength in weakness.

did we already discuss how cheap broken software will take over the world pushing out expensive elegant software?

There is no expensive elegant software, only cheap rboken oftware and expensive broken software.

And typos.  Always typos.

worse is better

> And typos

There's nothing wrong with a good topy.

Hmm. "TOPY indesutries, Ltd., we make, and digest steel." At least I now know what is meant by a "cast iron stomach".

When I developed a product for the Pharma industry, I was amazed at how faster better cheaper didn't sell.

Dd you see Pfizer (? I think) are axeing 800 researcher jobs? What a way to cut your own throat, long term.

>Dd you see Pfizer (? I think) are axeing 800 researcher jobs? What a way to cut your own throat, long term.

Pfizer has been cutting their own throat for years. They bought Warner-Lambert because they had nothing in the product pipeline, and started axing all of WL's product pipeline.

Pfizer is a marketing company. They don't need researchers because their strategy is buying up other companies, sucking them dry, and moving on.