97 of Top 100 Classified Sites Are Craigslist

According to a recent report, 97 of the top 100 classified sites are just localized versions of Craigslist, up from 88 just last year. Combine that with a massive rise in traffic to classified sites in general and you have a recipe for one raging behemoth. "Craigslist isn't just crushing the newspaper industry and crowding out other classified sites. It's also taking an increasing slice of total U.S Internet traffic: the site's market share in February was up 90% year over year, accounting for about 2.5% of total US Web site visits."

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In other news:

[ShadowRangerRIT]

As Prostitutes Turn to Craigslist, Law Takes Notice. Given how much of the web is devoted to porn, why is anyone surprised that the best site for marketing prostitution is doing so well?

Note to sarcasm impaired: This is (mostly) a joke.

Good Game, "old media", it was mediocre...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

While it lasted.

Seriously, though, Craigslist now seems to be an unstoppable testament to the power of network effects and general benevolence. The site feels like it was dragged out of 1993, stripped of all the animated .gif flaming skulls and starfield backgrounds, and dumped on the present. However, it is fast, even on devices without the chops for horrible flash and javascript monsters, unobtrusive, no in-your-face ads, and if it exists, you can find it.

I'm not at all surprised that it has terminated the traditional classifieds, since they all sucked; but I am mildly surprised that that it seems to be crushing its online competitors so absolutely. I would have expected at least a few me-too outfits with gmail-styled "Web 2.0" interfaces to be doing OK somewhere. Network effects, I suppose. Like ebay; but without the evil.

Re:Good Game, "old media", it was mediocre...

[gestalt_n_pepper]

"...the site feels like it was dragged out of 1993, stripped of all the animated .gif flaming skulls and starfield backgrounds..." which is EXACTLY why it's so successful and demonstrates nicely why other sites fail. It's straightforward, to the point, and not so junked up with marketing S**T that you can't find what you want.

Re:Good Game, "old media", it was mediocre...

[blhack]

The surprising thing is that all that "web 2.0" crap? Yeah, not that many people actually like it very much, especially not nerds (from what I've seen).

Craigslist is so popular because it just works there are no stupid buttons or widgets are anything that doesn't work on anything other than IE6 running on windows XP.

This is just my own experience, so bear with me here.
I remember when digg first came out, I was on that site all day, every day reading stories, posting stories, commenting on stories etc. etc. etc.
Then...well, then they changed the layout, added all kinds of gradients and 50 billion buttons that have no discernible purpose. I think I continued trying to use the site before I gave it up and migrated back to fark.
Then...and this one made me really sad, Slashdot jumped on the web 2.0 bandwagon. What was once a clean, obvious, straight-forward website was transformed into a disgusting mess of collapse/expand buttons (wtf, guys...really?), buttons, more buttons, buttons here and buttons freaking everywhere. slashdot.org/~$username/ no longer took me to my comment history, but rather to some mess of a page with no sort of explanation and, you guessed it, more fucking buttons. Also, some sort of a speech bubble with a number in it next to my latest one? What the hell is that?

So I've decreased my usage of slashdot but don't know where to turn to? There is my own website which i tried to make as clean as I could. There is reddit, which is an ungodly clusterfuck of conspiracy theorist whackjobs who think that the government is out to get them and post stories like "How can I hack a satelite?" which gets rocketed on to the front page.

It seems like the only place left, really, is hackernews. Their confusing policy of not having their name be the same as their URL has kept MOST of the retards away, but I fear that they're going to discover bookmarks soon. /rant over.

What we're experience is what I call "designers designing for designers". Its what happens when a designer (or a coder in this case) changes something because it looks really cool to people in-the-know, but fucking hideous to the people actually doing the consumption. Craigslist seems to be immune to this syndrome. I have no idea why, but I suggest that if they ever hire a graphic designer we take a flamethrower to their wacom tablet and CSS manual immediately.

Re:Good Game, "old media", it was mediocre...

[eltonito]

I recently overheard a web developer raving about this new online classifieds website he was launching in a few months. From what I could tell, it was solely focused on competing with Cragislist and they were going to achieve this by having very slick, graphical interface and unlimited sub-categorization. They were spending big money on this website and it was going to show!

Right then and there I knew their website, whatever it was called, was doomed to fail because they had missed the point. People neither need nor want a graphically slick, over-produced, banner-ad infested place to trade their toaster for a case of panty hose.

To boil your post (and maybe mine) down to a Han Solo quote "She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts, kid."

Re:Good Game, "old media", it was mediocre...

[JCSoRocks]

Seriously. Very few sites are as easy to navigate as Craigslist. They don't force unnecessary pagination for increased ad views. They don't base their entire layout around cramming ads into the middle of content that you're trying to read. The search is helpful and effective. The community around flagging / cleaning up garbage posts is pretty good. It's a tough site to beat. I hope they never jump on the idiotic web 2.0 bandwagon.

Re:Craigslist has a HUGE amount of scams.

[Red Flayer]

You need to be very careful on Craigslist.

You need to be very careful online.

The problem is that Joe User doesn't understand infosec, and trusts too much. Period.