Re:Ask HN: Industries Ripe For Disruption?
by josefresco on Tuesday February 10, 2009 @03:21PM
(#475854)
Not going to happen. Craigslist is at that early Google period where everyone who uses it for the first time never looks back and is uber-loyal to the brand. A slick competitor with a great interface and new tools still has to climb that huge Ebay/Facebook-style mountain (no users no stuff, no reason)
Re:Ask HN: Industries Ripe For Disruption?
by yellowbkpk on Tuesday February 10, 2009 @04:00PM
(#475954)
What about layering some features on top of Craigslist that are mind-numblingly idiotic to leave out? I'm thinking better meta-data for apartment listings, for example.
Re:Ask HN: Industries Ripe For Disruption?
by DaniFong on Tuesday February 10, 2009 @04:34PM
(#476000)
I don't know about 'they,' but if you build it I will come.
Re:Ask HN: Industries Ripe For Disruption?
by DaniFong on Tuesday February 10, 2009 @08:11PM
(#476315)
Incidentally, have you seen http://www.housingmaps.com/ ?
Re:Ask HN: Industries Ripe For Disruption?
by whatusername on Tuesday February 10, 2009 @08:13PM
(#476319)
no no no no no no.
Craigslist can't scale like google did because it's LOCAL. If I'm the only person in my country using google - I still have value. If I'm the only person in my country who uses craiglist - it's useless.
My local craigslist sucks. There's pretty much nothing there but spam.
Just make sure that when you launch - that you're not targeting SF/NYC.
(I will admit - there is local competitors that you would have to beat in most markets - so it's still tough - but it's not always cl.)
Re:Ask HN: Industries Ripe For Disruption?
by coglethorpe on Tuesday February 10, 2009 @04:46PM
(#476026)
I've used Craigslist for a car sale and wasn't impressed. I ended up paying a fee to AutoTrader and sold it fairly fast.
Re:Ask HN: Industries Ripe For Disruption?
by rokhayakebe on Wednesday February 11, 2009 @02:24AM
(#476696)
I think I help to sellore close to 100 cars through CL. Fast.
Re:Ask HN: Industries Ripe For Disruption?
by tontoa4 on Tuesday February 10, 2009 @07:25PM
(#476251)
I'm working on the motorcycle equivalent at MotoListr.com.
Re:Ask HN: Industries Ripe For Disruption?
by khafra on Wednesday February 11, 2009 @12:03PM
(#477226)
Your interface is cleaner and more attractive, but cycletrader.com is a pretty well established competitor. Do you have a plan for beating them along any particular axis?
Re:Ask HN: Industries Ripe For Disruption?
by tontoa4 on Monday February 16, 2009 @04:24AM
(#482846)
My plan is better dealer support. Direct line to my cell phone.
Or different countries. There are quite a few countries in which CraigsList never really "caught on" and where there isn't really something similar.
Agreed. Gumtree.com is much bigger in the UK than Craigslist, bizarrely due to the foreign community initially - lots of south africans, antipodeans got on gumtree when it first took off.
Posting a classified ad is only as useful as the number of interested parties who read it.
Your new site would have to be pretty fickin' special for me to post my ad there instead of to a massively larger audience on craigslist
Also, you can't exactly undercut them -- Craigslist is free for most categories and pretty reasonable for the others
CraigsList is not the be-all end-all of buying/selling things locally online. It may be a tough nut to crack, but it won't be hard to radically improve upon their horrible user experience. I would love to see some competition in this space.