http://www.wired.com/entertainment/theweb/magazine/17-09/ff_craigslist?currentPage=all

Talk about an uninspired uninterested and hostile CEO. I'm not a big craigslist user, but when I do I am always shocked how shitty it is to use. Reminds me a lot of eBay, they have the most users, and its the userbase that determines the success of marketplace apps.

All the whining from the newspapers about how craigslist has driven them out of business makes me roll my eyes, but the papers still have some customer trust and userbase left. With the recent crimes revolving around craigslist, now is the time to create a trusted alternative. They might still be too slow and dysfunctional to pull it off, eg, they need to realize the days of charging someone $30 to run an ad for a rummage sale are long gone. The basic stuff all needs to be free.

Yeah, I've had a lot of success with Craigslist, and I've even recommended it as a site to use to many people. Still, I wouldn't call it a "good" site. It serves its purpose though. Using the Craigslist Image Preview greasemonkey script has made it a lot more usable, but it's still not great.

That said, I owe a lot to Craigslist. My current apartment. My motorcycle. My truck. Even my job! All of them I found via craigslist, either exclusively or as a portal to some other collection of information.

I still think there's a huge opportunity to take on CL though. The trick is the same as growing ANY site really. All you need is a user base. The problem is the same as it is for sites like Facebook, eBay and even CL itself; they already HAVE the userbase. It's hard to convince people that your site is better when they've already invested their time and effort in some other site...

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no fat chicks

Well lucky your greasemonkey script still works, as CL intentionally alters its site to break stuff like that.

Quote by skeezer65134

sites like Facebook, eBay and even CL itself; they already HAVE the userbase.

I'd say Facebook or eBay would be well positioned to overtake CL if they wanted. Facebook especially. Then again FB and ebay have their own crappy interface issues they cant seem to sort out either, but I dont think they are so openly hostile to improving.

Yeah, it would be pretty hard to break it. All it does is look for img tags in the links and then just insert them into the search results. Unless they did aways with all images, I don't see how they'd stop that really.

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no fat chicks

Quote by skeezer65134

Yeah, it would be pretty hard to break it. All it does is look for img tags in the links and then just insert them into the search results. Unless they did aways with all images, I don't see how they'd stop that really.

They could be tricky and do it with arbitrary tags sized to the images then with the background images. It would be completely stupid, but they could do it. But it'd just be a game of cat and mouse.

Seems exceedingly dumb for CL to even care, though.

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Do it for the Lobster