Why the Web Hasn't Birthed a Prettier Craigslist | Hacker News Reader

Why the Web Hasn't Birthed a Prettier Craigslist

mashable.com

47 pointsdanso48 comments

One nice thing about CL: They get out of the way.

I haven't sold anything on eBay in probably two years because they are (or can be and have been) down-right horrible to sellers. Imagine having your entire Paypal account embargoed for a month because some guy complained about shipping costs. And this after having fifteen opportunities to NOT bid, each of which --and the listing-- clearly disclosed shipping costs.

On CL you get back to a truer buyer-seller relationship. If you don't have social problems (meaning you actually like engaging with people in person) CL is fantastic. I like shaking someone's hand after closing a win-win deal.

Yes, the CL site sucks. Obviously utility trumps design by a longshot. I love nice design but I always remind myself of CL when stressing over "pixel perfect design" (a tendency I have). people don't use a service because they are in awe of the design, they use it because of what they get out of it.

I hate selling things on craigslist. When I tried to sell a comforter, I had to correspond via email with 9 different people before someone would actually come and pick up the damn thing. They kept dropping out silently. When I would ping them, they'd say, "Oh, I bought a different one." or "I decided to buy it from <blah website>."

The problem is there is no reputation on craigslist, so people can be as bad as they want.

I can't compare that to ebay, tho. Maybe ebay is worse for a seller.

I've long considered CL one of the biggest tragedies of the internet age. The problem is it's just good enough to prevent competitors from gaining critical mass, but it's not good enough to consistently do an adequate job. There's a huge pent-up demand for what CL provides, including local person-to-person commerce, sublets, apartment hunting, job hunting etc. I probably use CL about 2-3 times a year, and I end up regretting it about half the time.

I think the primary thing that is missing is a system to establish the reputation of both parties. CL could tie accounts to real identities, and let users rate each other. But CL has no need to innovate. I agree with the article that it acts like a monopoly.

In your opinion, what job is it that CL fails to address adequately in a consistent fashion?

Ignore the real identity / account reputation issue, which nobody has managed to solve in an adequate fashion. What is it that CL promises, that it fails to follow through on?

Um, OK. How about the fact that apartment listings in NYC are basically 95% spam, with brokers advertising apartments that don't exist, to pull a bait and switch when you call -- including on the specifically non-broker pages?

Searching by price is broken (look for $500 listings and it will return $500 daily, $500 weekly, $500 monthly, all mixed up together). Searching by neighborhood is broken, since it relies on keywords (which can vary, and are full of spam besides) instead of actual lat/lon.

I could probably write a book on everything that is broken, and that's just on the apartment stuff alone. (I understand it's better outside of NYC, but since NYC is the largest city in the US, that doesn't really matter.)

"(I understand it's better outside of NYC, but since NYC is the largest city in the US, that doesn't really matter.)"

I always think it's funny that the most cosmopolitan cities can breed the most parochial attitudes.

Eh, I sorta agree. But applying some basic math to this page[1], we find that 4% of American households that rent, are renting an NYC apartment. That's a pretty sizable chunk.

[1] http://www.nmhc.org/Content.cfm?ItemNumber=55508

Maybe I worded it badly -- there's no attitude, I'm just saying that if a site has something broken for its largest domestic group of customers, but it works for everyone else, it doesn't matter -- it's broken period, and not an edge case.

If the largest group is less than 3% of the total then it could very well be an edge case.

I've always thought of CL as a community/local site, meaning it is up to the community to really shape it. CL can provide guidance and tools, but it is still up to the community; for example, if your community actively uses the flagging feature to cut down on posts that make the site worse, those posts will decrease in occurrence. NYC has ~14M people, so it is just harder to create a community that agrees on what is and isn't appropriate.

I've been dealing with this for the last few weeks. It's not just NYC that suffers from this problem, I've been apartment hunting on CL in San Antonio and it's all spam.

I've been thinking about writing a short script to filter listings by phone number—that seems to be the common element between brokerage listings.

In reality, Craigslist has hundreds of competitors across all the verticals they serve. For example, StreetEasy[1] for NYC apartment listings.

[1]: http://streeteasy.com/

Two issues. The first is the most important to me: I simply can't trust the other party a priori. I've had so many poor experiences on craigslist, including scams, clearly stolen items for sale, misleading descriptions, no-shows. This is why I think the identity/reputation issue is so important. If ebay needs a reputation system, craigslist needs it even more (CL is inherently more dangerous because you meet in-person and exchange cash). It's not just safety, I also value my time and every issue is wasted time.

The second isn't as big to me, but I do think searching craigslist is annoying and suboptimal. CL is a solution that worked great in 1998, but 15 years later it lags behind the standard web experience. Worse yet, as the article discusses, CL isn't just refusing to improve their user experience, they are refusing to let other people do so too.

I don't want to divulge my identity to the creeper that buys my old TV.

Ask yourself this: how long did it take craigslist to deliver a basic feature, maps? Every scrappy web startup has had some kind of maps mash-up since 2004.

Craigslist only recently added maps, seemingly because padmapper was so useful that craigslist had no choice but to momentarily wake up from its 10 year coma and actually improve the site for once.

The article misses the point of specialist companies competing with subsections of CL. It's not just what's happening to CL, it's what's happening to every dominant classified site around the world.

Classified sites used to be the dominant player in all of the markets they covered, but the profitable ones (housing, dating, jobs, etc.) have been taken over by companies specializing in those sectors leaving the classified sites with mostly the dregs of the market.

Sure some people might use CL for jobs and dating, but by and large those are the people who don't want to pay. Which is why CL's annual revenue is less than what sites like Monster and Match.com make in a few months.

Agreed. Craigslist masquerades as some kind of pseudo non-profit (".org") like it's doing the world a favor being a barebones piece of crap. But the reality is that it's an entrenched monopoly squatting on a huge piece of economic land and letting it languish. There are so many features and services that could be useful in this space that just aren't getting created.

I sincerely hope that the courts demolish craigslist's attempts to block smaller players from creating actual utility in the classifieds market.

"More features" is not the answer. I know you think it's the answer, but me and a billion other satisfied CL users are here to insist that it's not.

I appreciate a minimalist UI design. I really do. But I don't see it as mutually exclusive to providing genuinely useful features. IMO craigslist could add a number of features w/o sacrificing its core minimalism. Case in point: would you prefer Craigslist to drop the new maps feature?

If you think "actual utility" can be created in this space, just create it and masses will follow. Why do you need help from courts?

FYI, for people who have not been on Craigslist in awhile...it's also been a long time for me since I've used the service...I was just about to complain that CL doesn't need a radical redesign, it just needs features grafted on that users could choose.

For example, whenever I do apartment/furniture searching, I'll write a script to pull down the links so I can create my own webview of the links juxtaposed with the images...but I just checked the site and I guess CL has created a number of different views for the traditional list, including thumbnail-listings, a grid-layout, and mapping:

http://nyc.craigslist.org/search/sya?zoomToPosting=&altV...

I guess this was just added recently?

http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/03/craigslist-finally-gets-mor...

I just realised that craigslist map view is a burglar's dream tool.

There's actually a fast growing trend to use Facebook groups to sell things. They call them "24/7 Yardsales". They'll make a group for each city and then people bid through the comments. Some of the groups have over 8000 members. The experience is a bit different though compared to normal classifieds. The reason they refer to them as yardsales is because the members of the groups usually aren't looking for something specific. They're all just 'window shopping' for deals and Facebook notifies them instantly when something new is available.

My wife was pretty active in these groups and eventually came to me saying that a lot of people wished there was a better way to do this. So, I did what any good husband would do and spent a few weeks putting a site together for them. I combined her two favorite things. Pinterest & Yardsales. http://yardable.com (It was a nice excuse to play with some new tech too :P) All the items and users on the site are legit. I found some humor in the fact that the first items officially sold on Yardable were my old CS college books. I felt as if I had passed on the torch.

I wish I had more time to work on this. I got as far as building an API for a few people who wanted to build the mobile app for me. It seems like there's some interest in something better than Craigslist with more 'browsing' type features. There are a few startups out there working on this I believe. One of them is a YC company called http://www.getyardsale.com which went with the mobile approach first. Monetizing these ideas through something besides ads seems a bit challenging though.

Surely making money on these ideas is straightforward - take a cut of the transaction. The hard part is solving the chicken-and-egg problem.

The Yardsale app seems quite good, but no one uses it here in London. Is it popular in SF or other parts of America?

You can't take a part of the transaction since they all happen in-person with cash.

Not sure about Yardsale. None of the people around here knew about it. There's definitely a chicken & egg problem in this space. But I could see these things spread through small communities first. I had hundreds of registered users in a couple of weeks from Utah and watched it spread to Idaho and Arizona pretty quickly.

You can't take a part of the transaction since they all happen in-person with cash.

Ebay proves otherwise.

Well, eBay allows people to sell things to each other across the world/country which solves a different problem. Most of the people selling things on classifieds have no interest in having to go to the post office to ship your item and deal with paypal or something to get money. The items on these yardsale groups sell within minutes and someone comes to your door with cash in hand and the item is gone. People really like and trust the community aspect of selling things this way.

Plenty of people buy and sell on ebay within small local communities with a pickup only option. The trust factor comes from being in the same community and doing at least one good transaction. The mode of payment has nothing to do with it. In fact, it would be better if you didn't have to deal with cash.

Just because things have been done in a certain way doesn't mean they can't be done better.

Replace "Craigslist" with "Classified Ads" and the same thing can be said for over 100 years. ugly, spammy time waster calls for your ads, fake apartment listings (or worse scams), sex trafficking and more. I don't see how any of those things (other than perhaps "ugly") are immediately fixable on CL or any other site.

Personally I've done dozens of local CL transactions safely, securely and with a minimum of inconvenience.

The conversation here reminds me of the discussions last week around Microsoft Excel: Craigslist is a tool that techies seem to universally deplore, but every non-techie I know uses it regularly and without much complaint.

I'm a techie and I like to use craigslist. I like that it's fast and to the point. I couldn't care less about the lack of fancy design.

(Not every techie is a web design aficionado.)

techies seem to universally deplore, but every non-techie I know uses it regularly and without much complaint

This is a strawman argument. The truth, as always, is inconveniently somewhere in the middle. Plenty of techies love and use these tools, and lots of non-techies hate their very existence.

Even if the black-and-white picture you paint were true, it's a good thing to have people unhappy with the status quo. Otherwise we wouldn't have things like Airbnb.

Exactly. Sooner or later, some bloviating "hacker" is going to boldly state that "Craigslist is broken" with or without some half-assed attempt at one-upping them to go along.

You could have used the same reasoning to dismiss computers in general. This is more reflective of human imagination than any inherent qualities of the products in question. Call it the They-Would-Have-Said-Faster-Horses Principle.

There is worse than that. In Italy several companies tried to establish as the "Italian Craigslist", using a lot of money too, and nobody succeeded so we have a fragmentation of small sites but no one is really used enough, updated enough, ... basically is all useless outdated stuff.

The problem is that the target audience, as a whole, doesn't necessarily care about prettiness. It's functional, it works, and the users are comfortable with the design, so there's no need to fix it.

I am reminded of Digg's redesign and descension.

I think the title of this article is a little misleading. It's easy to bash Craigslist over their dated (or lack of) style, but the problem with Craigslist really comes down to usability, which is not the same thing as prettiness.

Craigslist could make lots of feature and UI improvements to their site to make it easier to find and post, but they choose not to for the most part. If they did, sites like PadMapper probably wouldn't exist. Instead of innovating themselves, they've focused on trying to kill other companies innovating in this space.

I think this article miss an important point, Craiglist does the job. It's not fancy and the content is poorly written and it's the reason why people want to post to it. They don't want to understand a new system with reputation or painful other features, you just take your add, throw 2/3 lines, a dirty picture and it's done. There is scam but in the other it's easy to post or to reply, it's about free market and responsibility (mainly my point is: we are not babies). Moreover, Craiglist is cheap or free so why caring? I mean your are using obviously using Hacker News and maybe reddit, we can say the same about them.

Though, I totally agree about the law suits. They shouldn't do that. I think it hurts their businesses for gaining only short term partnerships. This is the real issue, not UI.

I am interested in knowing what people are missing from the UI perspective? Reputation is bullshit for individuals and Favorites is gadget, so what else?

Here's one example:

If I'm looking for an apartment close to work, I'd much rather pull up a map centered on my workplace and see the listings on the map. That's what padmapper (https://www.padmapper.com/) was allowing me to do. With the unchanging Craigslist, I choose a neighborhood (which could be huge and I could be on the border of) and hunt through a long list, clicking on every post to check where it really is.

It would definitely be nice if it was a bit prettier but there are usability issues that they don't address (and prevent others from addressing) because they have a monopoly on a certain network.

Craigslist has a map feature now.

It's not that it hasn't been tried before.

I would guess it's similar to Atwood and his new Discourse platform. It looks nice, and developers & designers get excited about it. But one reason forum software hasn't been dramatically overhauled in the last 10-15 years is because it's working for most people.

I've sold plenty of junk on craigslist and I've bought a few things from there as well. I did the same thing with Freecycle and Cheapcycle when we lived in a town that did those. None of those were glamorous. In addition, the people I met there were from all walks of life.

I get why startups think CL is ugly and not useful, but go do a UI overhaul and sit back for the barrage of hate that is going to come from the core users.

The design is the least of Craigslist's problems. The scams and spam are what turn me off.

For the some of the same reasons why somewhat crummy, but still more or less serviceable student apartments exist. It has sufficient utility. The landlords make enough money. And in the end, what choice is there, really? Then on top of that, add the network effect.

Because CL works well enough. My spouse and I found a virtually new wheelchair for a friend with MS in two days with no middleman fee or hassle.

For niches, there's alternatives. My family and friends use other sites estate sales, radio gear, land sales, apartments, handymen, etc...

I found all my jobs on Craigslist . I love it just the way it is.

If those people are so frustrated with CL design they should make their own and build their own community.

It has.

But prettier full-featured CLs exist in specific verticals (e.g. AirBNB), so we don't compare them to CL.

To do what CL aims to do, the simple directory style is necessary, I think.

In Canada a lot of people use Kijiji instead of Craigslist. It's a bit better, and there are mobile apps as well.

tl;dr

Don't know. It really was to long and I didn't finish reading it.

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