Where's Craigslist?

We are no longer adding new Craigslist listings to our index.   We received a request from them to do so and we honored that request.   We’ll miss Craigslist.   They are clearly a good service and we're big fans.  We are working to understand and address their concerns.

As of last month, about 80% of our listings came from sources other than Craigslist.   Without them, we still have about 4.5M active classified listings and that number will continue to climb by the millions in the coming months.

We strongly believe that search plays an important role in any Internet ecosystem, especially ones involving commerce.   We’re glad to have had a good response from the 99.9% of the other classified publishers in our index and we’ll continue to work hard to make them happy.  We send them free traffic.   We don’t compete with them by taking listings.   And we'll continue to work hard to make classifieds a better online medium for consumers trying to buy & rent things.

At the end of the day -- with our without Oodle -- consumers check multiple sources when using classifieds.  Oodle  makes this process less painful and helps consumers to be more successful.    And if you're in the business of publishing classifieds, this is a good thing.

Comments

[Kevin]

Long live free speech on the internet, huh? Congratulations to craigslist for doing its part to further the fascist state!

[Ray]

craigslist is just the first player who will exit your list. you serve no purpose other than to act like a parasite with others content. be gone.

[Craig Newmark]

Kevin, please help me understand your statement.

Remember, that every misuse of the term "fascist" helps the bad guys.

thanks!

Craig

[gina]

is google a parasite? why is it bad for oodle to show me multiple places where i can find things? i live in the bay area where craigslist rules and still find it useful. helped me find a few things i definitely would have missed.

[Brett]

Ray, do you use Google, Yahoo search, Technorati or any blog readers? How would you compare what they are doing with Oodle? Those are valuable tools of helping people discover what they are looking for across the resources of the internet.

[Danny]

This is a real disappointment for anyone who believes search is a valuable tool for consumers. However, it is only one small step backwards in the long, undeniable, and inevitable march towards progress.

[Tony]

Craigslist seems stuck in web1.0 thinking - struggling with the cultural shift towards openness. Oodle is pushing innovation and making real improvements to classifieds UI. There's no reason that a partnership between Oodle and Craigslist couldn't help both companies. I hope the team at Craigslist reconsiders, for their benefit and for all users

[Pixsy BizDev]

the problem is that random spidering/scraping is a business model that doesn't fully support content owners/creators. it's intrusive to the content owner and getting a little extra traffic doesn't necessarily make it worthwhile for craiglist to allow this. makes sense to me.

Pixsy BizDev

[Jason L. Baptiste]

Hey guys, we're developing one huge source of information and media for college students. We're going to be available at over 2,000 college campuses. We'd love to have our content searched by oodle. We're offering jobs, housing, items for sale. It's a shame craigs list blocked you guys. my email is [email protected] Let's talk. Thanks again, and great job on the produc.

Sincerely,
Jason L. Baptiste
CEO of UGather.com

[Web Feeds]

Is there a reason why they wanted you to stop indexing them?
http://www.craigslist.org/robots.txt

Surely all they had to do was disallow you in their robots.txt?

[anon]

Damn, Craig- you just lost your coolness. It's clear that you don't like the idea of other derivative businesses "profiting" off of your "humanitarian" site. Get a life. I'm pretty sure you took money from ebay. Unless there is something more to this that I'm missing, like theyre causing your servers to crash, then this is ridiculous and a definite counter-statement to what made you popular (free enterprise! ie, your users).

[Jon]

HOLY SHIT! So much for that idea. You just got knock the fu*k out! CL isn't everything so I wouldn't worry until every publishers starts feeling the same way.

None of the other verticals received the letter. Newmark views you just like he views the newspapers. Who knows maybe he just doesn't want to be associated with you.

[Martin E]

So its perfectly alright to take another company's hard work built up over time and pirate it in the name of 'freedom'? And then call them a facist for doing something about it?
Craigslist should be revered by the people supporting oodle, not chastized- these guys do 99% of their service for free with the other 1% there to make a living and ptotect them from people who were posting false ads for jobs and apartments to generate leads.
If you think Craig is unreasonable just wait until the real old school media starts coming at you with the lawyers- they won't be polite about it....

[Mark Baker]

Craig - provide this aggregation capability yourself, or let Oodle do it. Anything else serves only to inconvenience your users.

[FrankM]

Unfortunately, this is no surprise. CL has severely gone downhill in the past 12 months as they've focused on the push to expand into every city on Earth. As a result, they've become extremely arrogant as demonstrated by many of it's own staff members and have become very secretive and close-mouthed on their dealings. I think that ego has finally gotten the best of Craig as he enjoys being a local celebrity, a big fish in a small pond.

[Josh]

Please, please, plase: keep oodle alive!

Don't allow these guys to control you. Craig and his CEO Jim run a company that makes profit. Plenty of profit. Don't let the .org fool you--you are taking they're traffic and they're pissed! But there is no reason to fault them--they're in this to make money; someone has to put Tevas on their feet and rent is very expesive in SF.

Oodle must make profit too. This whole concept of all information must be open and free is great, but certainly the people who faciliate this must get paid to do it.

Oodle blows Craig away in every way. Scrape him anyway, we'll pay your legal. I'd love to see Craig's reputation after trying to file a copyright suit. What a bully!

Or even better, just enhance your offering by allowing submissions directly to your site. You don't need to be search only! You are better than all these sites!!!

[spudart]

Hey, where's a link to the oodle site? I found this post via auctionlink.com. I know i can probably just go to oodle.com right? Or i could just google oodle to find the URL. But I'm just suggesting that it might be helpful (and good promotion) if you included a link to the homepage of oodle somewhere on all your pages. Perhaps a nice footer.

[Ray]

Oodle is the first of many to come. 99% of those will come to make money. 99% won't. watch this fragment into ... what? ... add google shortly and who then will want to provide content...for google to make money with...you aint seen nothen yet..and craig?... how smart are you really... the easy part is over perhaps...

and whats "classifieds UI" anyway?

[Chairman Mao]

I had to laugh when Craiglist was named "most customer driven" company by BW or Fortune or someone last month.

Craiglist hasn't innovated one iota. It's all about what ye olde benevolent Craig thinks is "best" for his community.

Craig doesn't like fancy AJAX UI so Craiglist doesn't have it.

Craig doesn't think scraping is cool (or at least in *SOME* cases he doesn't), so no more scraping.

Craig will kill Craiglist the same way every paternalistic "one best way" type destroys what he loves in the end.

10 years from now, Craiglist will be an interesting footnote. In 2007 they will cap out at 20% penetration of Internet users. By that time, Google, Ebay, Zixxo, and scores of others will have innovated circles around CL. CL will hit a wall once they've expanded into most major cities and tapped all the "innovators" and "early adopters" (to use some Crossing the Chasm speak). And that will be it. No "regular people" will put up with a site as archaic and cumbersome as CL (my mom will NEVER use CL because it's way too wonky and tech-oriented). CL will die a well-deserved death on the left side of the chasm.

[Sun Tzu]

I've heard Craig Newmark speak quite a bit, and respected his focus on the community at all costs. His mantra is that he does what is "best for the community". Well if some of your community wants to find their listings via the Oodle UI, isn't that what is best for that portion of the community? And how does an alternate search/navigation mechanism harm your community? It appears to me that a more honest mantra would now be "what is best for Craigslist the company". That's fine, I understand, but don't continue your creative commons and "what's best for the community" shtick. At least be intellectually honest and admit that like every other corporation, you are looking out for your OWN self-interests, not just those of "the community".

[jf]

To All: Oodle is no more a parasite than any search engine. It facilitates commerce. Legally, unless Craig can prove monetary harm--he loses every case- guaranteed (getting an injunction is not winning a case). So until that day comes, Oodle is not illegal, immoral or fattening. If you list on CL & make a sale, do you care where the buyer came from? You will continue to list on CL because of a successful sale (you can't list on Oodle anyway,it's hard to beat free & you love Craig). Anyway, its not about Craig or Oodle--its about the buyer & seller. Myself, a buyer--lead me to the darn stuff, as a seller--sell my darn stuff. Looks like shades of E-bay v. Bidders Edge to me.

[jf]

Oh by the way, the content (listings) don't belong to Craig. They belong to the listers. Don't you agree Craig?

[[email protected]]

If Craigslist was an actual business maybe they would want people using their content. Perhaps Oodle should compete with craiglist.

[TheBigPoint]

There is no good or bad here... To break it down simply is this.

Someone creates a song, work of art, sculpture, etc and lets the world have "it" for free.

Then a second person copys that song, work of art or scuplture and claims it as their own NOT as a re-release from the original source.

The listing are not Craig's HOWEVER the work that he put forth to create that system is his... (E.g. "inventing" a Penny cup)

Oodle, is guilty of taking something that was not given to them and using as their own when it was not intended for that purpose.(e.g. 'Jacking the Penny cup... instead of installing your own penny cup and presenting pennies for others you steal the pennys from another cup to put in your own...)

[zenlawyer]

We agree that the content (ads) belongs to someone else --the listers (its their pennies)--therefore, if someone hijacks the listing, it is the lister who should object. Have any?

Since the pennies (listings) don't belong to CL, the theft was not of Craig but the lister.

As far as the "invented" penny cup--I give credit to old school "PennySaver", that neighborhood classified in print. Is CL really a new penny cup--where's his patent?

It all begs the question --is CL legally damaged by Oodle? To win $ in court you MUST PROVE money damages. If you win on technical grounds w/o showing actual $ lost, guess what- you get a thin dollar. If CL (read E-bay)is hurt they will sue & then we'll see. read the Ticketmaster v. tickets.com case