Craigslist and Google's site speed enhances their success, it isn't the cause of their success. Their content is what the user wants. Giving it to them fast is a huge bonus.

I don't want to see shit fast. I want to see good stuff fast. If I have to, I'll wait to see really good stuff.

> Meanwhile the also-rans with busy pages (remember Yahoo leading the search space? Digg leading link aggregation?) are now near forgotten.

Yet Amazon, with an incredibly busy page thrives. Because the content is what matters.

Case in point: plenty of HN readers click on the comment thread but not TFA. I believe that a lot of the time, that's due to dread of some godawful slow loading page contaminating their browser with tracking cooties and who knows what.

Yes, you were talking about site design and you were wrong.

Craigslist doesn’t thrive because it’s a fast site. It thrives because it has great content and is also fast. Craigslist with awful content would not thrive.

If you can give me super content medium fast, I'll take that over medium content super fast. It's really only at the extremes do things start to differ (ie shit content or snails pace slow & glitchy).

Of course, the ideal setup is super content super fast, which is why Craigslist is probably never going to do a major rebrand. They already have plenty of startups constantly nipping at their heels, so they may as well maintain the super fast advantage they have over them to cement their status. Their only real threat would be a super speedy, super pretty, site that somehow launches full of good content.

After much creative destruction, we're back to inserting classified ads next to the stuff people are reading to pass the time.

Did you miss the part where it led to a very large increase in sales?