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Comment by defterGoose | Hacker News Reader

CL is still alive and well here in LA. It's possible it's just in the markets I'm looking in (tools, machinery, cars, etc), but I've always preferred it over things like FB, OfferUp etc. I feel like the people I meet from CL are generally much more knowledgeable about what they have and its value. Other platforms often feel like a relative selling grandpa's stuff and have done the bare minimum of research to find a price point. Usually if someone on CL lacks knowledge, it means I'm getting a great deal that day rather than waiting for them to realize they're asking too much in a small market.

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I think it's the certain markets that determine how useful CL is--I'm also in LA. I've mainly dealt in furniture & electronics, and CL in other cities, particularly Minneapolis, was a dream, so good in fact that I didn't know FB marketplace existed until I moved to LA and had to look elsewhere after seeing how bad the CL market for used stuff was.

The musical instruments page for Dallas-Fort Worth gets about 3-5 pages a day of valid new postings.

I went down to San Antonio and there were about 5 a week during the same relative time period. Thus I validate the notion that it’s market dependent. SA is not a tech hotspot but there are a lot of musicians there.

My theory about CL is that between the minimalist UI and bad press it discouraged “normies” (for lack of a better word) who were afraid to get scammed so it was mostly serious sellers, plus occasional scammers who were not hard to spot. I met many delightful people over the years dealing with vintage audio, motorcycles, midcentury furniture. Facebook marketplce sellers are much flakier in my experience.

Echoing my thoughts down the page, the problems that you mention, from a "normies" perspective, make a interesting thought exercise in wondering how you could attach suitable features to satisfy these needs. It's easy to mumble "open the API", but first one may have to consider how a API can handle the continuation of crucial revenue generation native site features such as advertising and data analysis reuse. Something more involved than a REST interface seems necessary.

the suitable features are customers that aren't normies.

Exactly. CL works perfectly. No improvement needed.

I love craigslist, people who make craigslists ads are generally no bullshit serious about selling and every experience I have had was... fun, it honestly has been great fun meeting the people of craigslist lol.

I think the fact that craigslist hasnt changed look in 25 years or whatever attracts a certain kind of seller/buyer and that certain kind of seller/buyer is overall a really decent person who isn't trying to rip anyone off.

Try to find a used computer or phone or really any other electronic. FB Marketplace has 5x the inventory.

Facebook's interface is heavily burdened with ugly templates, is needlessly complex and clunky. Page crashes! Facebook is also draconian about logging in, can't see much if you're not logged in, thus FB is elitist. You're required to you hand over your identity and submit to forced content and advertising. I personally fully retreated from Facebook permanently by 2009. Good for you, if you don't mind giving up privacy and being a product, but it is not for me.

Craigslist's interface isn't sexy, but it is impressively fast and stable. No page crashes, ever. No forced content. No login necessary to search, often no account necessary to contact sellers. If an account is required to contact a seller, it is anonymous and disposable. Craigslist works the way the Internet used to work before it was taken over by advertisers, tracking and javascript. I hope it never changes, and I wish more web developers would take their cues from its simplicity and potency, because the more complex and tricky a website gets, the worse it is, unilaterally.

Agreed. That being said for some more hard to find used items I have definitely used a friends Facebooks account to contact people because there are some real deals on FB marketplace comparatively.

Facebook also does aggressively fuzzy searching. I was in the market for a sailboat last year, and knew pretty specifically what I wanted. Facebook would always be about 50% what my specific search term was, and then 50% barely related bullshit (wrong brand / size, sailing accessories, powerboats)

I've also found Facebook exceptionally flaky from both the seller and buyer side. I don't usually expect responses on half the stuff I'm interested in on Facebook, and it's almost impossible to even give stuff away with the flakiness of people actually showing up to pick it up.

it seems to, but sometimes getting the seller to ever reply is a herculean feat. people regularly fail to remove items they've sold, or they literally just never ever reply.

hard to tell if it really has that much more to choose from.

seems like when there are no local results they just flood it with global listings

Yea I still use CL mainly in LA as well. Then again I am not comparing it directly to FB marketplace. That being said CL was never good for some stuff

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