116 karma · joined October 16, 2010
1. Anyone is free to come up with a better provide that serves Craigslist users' needs, you can argue that craigslist is the dominant player and it's hard to steal users from them, but many niche-focus startups have proved otherwise (or they simply don't have a compelling enough products);
2. When it comes to the time Craigslist fails its users functionally and aesthetically, it's hard to imagine no other players will surge up in the game;
3. Even if Craigslist provides an API now but doesn't improve its user experience, do we just want it to serve as a database for all other services that piggyback on Craigslist?
So my message to Craigslist: "Just think hard about how to serve your users better. You're not an asshole for restricting data access to your site, but it is irresponsible to waste other engineers lives on trying to defeat you while you can easily make yourselves better for your users!"