Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

PadMapper Gets C&D From Craigslist Over Apartment Listing Maps

Posted by timothy on from the too-bad-smart-service dept.

First time accepted submitter Autumnmist writes "Craigslist has sent a Cease and Desist to PadMapper, a site that does a mashup of Craigslist (as well as Rent.com, Apartments.com) apartment listings and Google Maps. Craigslist is great, but apartment hunting through Craigslist has always been a needle in a haystack proposition, because all apartments for an entire city area are shown in a giant list. PadMapper made Craigslist better by locating each listing on a Google Map of the area. From PadMapper: 'I recently received a Cease and Desist letter from Craigslist, and wasn't able to get a meeting or convince Craigslist's lawyer that PadMapper was beneficial to Craigslist and apartment hunters in general. They allow mobile apps to display their listings if you buy a license from them, but not websites."

7 of 140 comments (clear)

  1. Why only PadMapper? by t4ng* · · Score: 4, Insightful

    HousingMaps.com has been doing this for something like 5 years. I'm sure there are probably others like it too.

    1. Re:Why only PadMapper? by rgbrenner · · Score: 4, Informative

      Did you try using the two sites. HousingMaps has a link to craigslist on the front page, and when you click on a listing, it goes to craigslist.

      PadMapper has no links to craigslist, and when you click on a listing, they display the listing on their own site without (as far as I can tell) even a mention of where it came from.

      Go to a site, scrape everything and present it as your own? Enjoy the C&D.

      Seriously, it looks like PadMapper deserved it.

    2. Re:Why only PadMapper? by rgbrenner · · Score: 5, Informative

      I take part of my post back.. they do show the listing in a frame.. so if they had Craigslist's listing on there, it should be clear they are from craigslist

    3. Re:Why only PadMapper? by ottothecow · · Score: 4, Informative
      Unfortunately I am currently looking for an apartment and housingmaps doesn't seem to be a good substitute.

      I just pulled up the same area with the same price range as I was looking at yesterday in padmapper and housingmaps only shows two apartments for rent where padmapper was showing 30+ (and most of the padmapper results were craigslist based)

      --
      Bottles.
  2. Why bother? by SlowTurtle · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Not only is this a major bummer for me, as I love using PadMapper, I don't see why craigslist would do this. Not only did it make craigslist apartment listings actually usable, but it must be driving a fair amount of traffic to them as well. Perhaps if craigslist was about to launch something similar I could understand, but I think we all know that is not going to happen.

  3. Padmapper makes Craigslist useful!!! by SecurityTheatre · · Score: 5, Informative

    Padmapper is the first site I've ever seen that makes apartment hunting on Craigslist actually useful!!!!

    WTF?!?

    I'm looking for a house in a specific neighbourhood and it's absolutely impossible to do via Craigslist directly!!! If Craig offered a map, I would at least understand why they might issue a C&D, but seriously...

    Padmapper links directly into craigslist and displays the full-screen whenever you click on the listing. It's not like they're aggressively scraping content! It's just a searching service.

    This is terrible, Craigslist!! Terrible!

  4. Re:It like the 80's never ended in San Fran by Ossifer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yeah, why don't they have seven different competing nav bars and three layers of epilepsy-triggering flash ads?

    The plain text UI is *exactly* why CL is popular.