Craigslist, LinkedIn, Netflix, and others don't owe us anything.

http://monkeymace.com/post/25740159275/craigslist-linkedin-netflix-and-others-dont-owe-us-anyth

by thebdmethod • 14 years ago

189 171 14 years ago

I think the reason people here feel this way is because the general consensus among HN users is that the best product wins and that's all that matters. If a company has a monopoly on data and refuses to provide an API they're saying that they don't want to compete on the quality of their product (craigslist for example) they want to keep their position without the benefits to the users.

Padmapper made craigslist apartment searches much better, instead of making their own apartment searches better craigslist shut Padmapper's access to craigslist data down. It shows that they value their own business more than they value the experience of their users, which to a lot of people here isn't exactly "good".

Companies are free to do with their data whatever they want and they're free to restrict access to it however they like, sure, but it's still lame when a company does it because they don't want to improve their product and don't like competition.

atomical2• 14 years ago

If that's the general consensus of HN users I don't think many stand to make any money.

MultiRRomero• 14 years ago

Craigslist's one goal in the world is to make a profit. That's it. Everything else comes secondary. If they decide that providing users a service will help them accomplish this, then have them provide a good service (which they do). However, they don't owe anything to any businesses or even any users. If users don't like this, let them go to an alternative. Welcome to capitalism, where the users decide what product they want. (Now if you don't like what the majority of users are deciding, then that's another issue altogether.)

nestlequ1k2• 14 years ago

Save it for econ class. A company's goal is to build a sustainable profit generating engine. To allow this, it needs to play a constructive part in the marketplace and community.

waterlesscloud7• 14 years ago

These companies owe the consumers who are paying them. That's it.

The consumers absolutely have a right to express that they are dissatisfied with the exchange being made.

mwd_2• 14 years ago

Craigslist is a privately-owned company and was actually a non-profit at one point. In the past Craig Newmark has talked about Craigslist as a tool for community organization and so on. If Craigslist were 100% profit-driven I think it could have made a lot more money off of its huge user base.

paulhodge• 14 years ago

You talk as if there is perfect market choice - that if a majority of customers want something, it will happen. In the real world, there is not perfect market choice. There are many factors which make it impossible to have perfect market choice. We are probably stuck with Craigslist and LinkedIn for a while, and for the most part, we are stuck with the decisions that their executives make.

It's true that if they do something highly awful, then that might create enough demand for a competitor to take over. But it would have to be a high degree of awfulness to overcome their existing momentum. There are many shades of not-quite-awful, where those companies can make decisions with market impunity.

So considering that we're kinda stuck with those guys, I think the question becomes, why shouldn't we complain if they are doing something that we don't like? Doesn't matter who owes who what. It's our world, we should try to improve it.

xelipe• 14 years ago

I don't think Craiglist has a "monopoly on data", they have a monopoly on their data and they have not incentive to make their data freely available.

davidw2• 14 years ago

What Craigslist has is what economists call "positive network externalities" or network effects. Which just means that it's a really valuable service because tons of other people use it. Buyers go there because lots of people are selling, and lots of people selling go there because they know lots of buyers visit the site.

encoderer3• 14 years ago

It's not "their" data. It's their user's data. As a user and a homeowner I post my rental listing to Craigslist because that's where the most prospective renters are.

In the past, do you think anybody ever looked at the classifieds page in a newspaper and thought "this data is owned by the Times"?

In the PadMapper case, who are the losers? Renters benefit from a radically different UI and de-cluttering of daily reposts. Owners benefit from the increased traffic to their listing. Craigslist benefits because it's more of a 1-stop-shop for owners: post to craigslist (and pay them), and get some level of syndication to different services and apps. They also aren't losing out from reduced mindshare of renters: when you use PadMapper you know you're using Craigslist. It's always obvious and all links point there.

mcantor• 14 years ago

> they have not incentive to make their data freely available

How about the convenience and enjoyment of their users?

I kid, I kid.

heliodor• 14 years ago

Actually, Craigslist values us, the users, more than most companies. You know how? By leaving so much money on the table that you can't help but love them! Craigslist is a breath of fresh air in a world where everything is optimized as much as possible to part us from our money!

jarcoal3• 14 years ago

If CL decided to take that money on the table, they might have rubbed a lot of people the wrong way and went out of business years ago.

Maybe they realized the path to greatest profitability was to act like they don't care about profits.

Just a thought.

prostoalex• 14 years ago

That is not strictly true. A better search would save the users time, compared to clicking through CL pages, which for popular categories could be overwhelming.

stfu2• 14 years ago

That might be also one of the basis for the long time success of Craigslist. Absolute simplicity combined with a rigorous un-intrusive experience for the regular user - no ads, no sign up, no follow us on Twitter.

jacoblyles3• 14 years ago

I don't see how Craigslist refusing to better themselves justifies the millions of hours wasted by their customers using their shitty UI. What a strange sense of justice.

If you value users, don't hurt yourself to show it. Rather, don't shut off sites that save them hours of their limited and precious lifetime.

dredmorbius3• 14 years ago

Craigslist aren't doing this strictly out of the kindness of their hearts.

By charging for only a small number of listing, CL accomplish two things:

1. They create a large marketplace, which by virtue of its size provides more value than if it were a smaller, more diversified set of markets.

2. It "sucks the oxygen out of the room" for any competitor attempting to create a similar service. There are a few other commerce-related online sites -- eBay, Amazon, iTunes store, etc., and even a few competing specialized listings services (jobs, apartments, etc.) -- but none that specifically serve the general classifieds market.

I do suspect that there's a genuine component to CL's community service mission. But that doesn't mean the self-serving aspects of its behavior are any less valid.

jacoblyles3• 14 years ago

Craigslist is the IE6 of classified ads. They are a monopoly that keeps the product shitty and prevents innovation.

Padmapper is the Mozilla.

huhtenberg• 14 years ago

It's more of Avant then... as in, you know, the wrapper around the IWebBrowser2 interface.

ebrenes• 14 years ago

Is it really? I think all these derisive comments against CL are focusing on tangential details to the classified ad market.

If I place a classified ad it is to find a buyer for the services or product I'm trying to move. CL currently does that better than the competition. Yet the comments I see being handed around are about UI, design, automation and other items that might, but don't actually increase my chance of selling. To replace CL those sites need to provide the person posting the ad with a chance of finding a buyer that's equal to or greater than CL.

If those new start-ups can't provide that, but only have a shinier UI to offer, then they're competing on irrelevant details that aren't the main drivers behind people's decisions to post/view CL.

Others have mentioned marketing approaches and techniques to help improve those aspects. But most of what I've read is summarized as: "we'll provide a better app/ui/api" and that's a noble goal, but the reason for existing of these sits is to connect seller with buyer, what do those things bring to the table if a new app lacks a sufficiently large viewing audience? That's the problem that needs solving, not the app/ui/api one.

kenjackson• 14 years ago

If a company has a monopoly on data and refuses to provide an API they're saying that they don't want to compete on the quality of their product

This implies that part of the quality of a product is NOT the ability to gather data. This would be like me walking into a Walmart, setting up a cash register next to theirs and start ringing up customers and arguing that Walmart can't compare with my customer service. Ignoring that customer service is just one small part of the business. Walmart had to find the property, buy the property, do the legal work to get the product on the shevles, the negotiation, the supply chain management, etc... I can't just focus on the last mile and then argue that I'm entitled to everything else they did.

Craigslist built its name, it's reputation, it's backend, it's API, vetted a business model for its services, scouted out regions to focus on etc...

Furthermore, people are arguing the data is the users, not CLs. True, but the user gave it to CL, not to you. When I loan books to a neighbor I assume they aren't going to create a library of my loaned books (unless they specifically told me so).

Maascamp• 14 years ago

Well said. I'm actually shocked that a community of entrepreneurs would take the position that it's OK to demand access to a company's competitive advantage in order to compete with them.

I'm not sure if it's a sense of entitlement fostered by all the seemingly easy money around tech startups or simply sheer laziness.

scott_meade2• 14 years ago

"the general consensus among HN users is that the best product wins and that's all that matters"

That's human nature. Users in marketing communities conclude that it's the best marketing that wins. If you're an executive you think the best management team is all that matters. Designers think it's design. PR folks think it's press. Financiers think it's money.

I have bad news for everyone. The world does not work in the way our echo-chambers would seem to model it. It's almost impossible for the human mind to process such a fact. Yet, it's true.

ryanisinallofus2• 14 years ago

Choosing Pealk as the example in this very short rant is a classic Straw man argument. What about Padmapper?

jasonlotito7• 14 years ago

PadMapper, a company that was working to directly compete with Craigslist? What about Padmapper?

monkeymace7• 14 years ago

thanks for that. PadMapper probably would have been fine if they remained craigslist only.

I was watching Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai last night. In it there are a number of Samurai codes that are highlighted in title cards. One of them was this:

"If one were to say in a word what the condition of being a samurai is, its basis lies first in seriously devoting one's body and soul to his master. Not to forget one's master is the most fundamental obligation for a retainer."

madrona• 14 years ago

Hear, hear. With all the talk of "pivoting" and whatnot on HN, I'm really surprised at how many people are so utterly hostile to businesses changing course at Internet speed. Have your cake and eat it too, eh?

zobzu2• 14 years ago

But wouldn't it be nice?

Wouldn't we all better off as a whole if technology wasn't solely based on profit only?

I think that's the real question, and what started the whole "API" "open XXX", not "OMG I WANT IT /CRY/CRY" that the image suggests. Remember that most devs nowadays participate in open source projects and start to have different ethics than they used to have (which was, money > everything, and justifies all actions)

romanows2• 14 years ago

Honest question, what devs are you thinking of that put profit above everything else? Newcomers during the dot-com bubble?

scott_meade2• 14 years ago

That is a good question, seeing how I don't know how Pealk made any money at all.

zobzu2• 14 years ago

Well, I did point out that devs have better ethics than they used to have. It's the companies in general that drive them away from that (willingly, unwillingly, or even without knowing).

Or the dev-became-CEO, too, I guess. Not all of them of course.

I just wish it would keep on being "more open" for these reasons, and it would be sad to go back to an "all proprietary, closed, etc" world.

wandernotlost2• 14 years ago

All the mentioned companies form at least part of their business on data collected from their users. Not products or sevices formed of raw material. Even Netflix depends on its users' data heavily in order to run its recommendation system. So to expect that they allow the public, in the form of other companies providing other services based on said data, is not so unreasonable at all.

As a provider of data from which these companies make their profits, I believe it is entirely reasonable to demand that they make those data accessible to other services I'd like to use. Sadly the trend of the Internet has been away from open systems and toward siloed, proprietary data stores.

jasonlotito7• 14 years ago

You make the mistake of assuming that you gave them your data and got nothing in return. You did.

What you're upset about is that you've already given them your data, and now you want more for it. You've upped your price after handing over the product, and them having delivered the product.

waterlesscloud7• 14 years ago

What about the posts I put on Craigslist in the future? The ratings I give to Netflix?

Am I somehow mystically bound to never ask for more in return for the data I provide them?

Of course we can ask to change the terms. It's a business transaction.

wandernotlost2• 14 years ago

Please point to the part of my comment where I said I got nothing in return. I'm not sure what makes you think that customers can't demand things of those they do business with. There's always a potential new competitor, and I can always choose to take my business elsewhere. Also, who's saying I've upped my price? This all started because of narrowing of restrictions on APIs, not people suddenly demanding APIs where none existed.

atomical2• 14 years ago

I'm glad someone said it. It's foolish to develop a product exclusively with another company's API. But maybe Pealk was looking to get acquired all along? In that case this whole debacle has a valuable lesson in it: Don't build a feature, build a product.

kika4• 14 years ago

Correct. But, IMHO, they (Craigslists of the world) owe us, consumers. We're their eyeballs, customers, users, we bring them food, directly or indirectly. Well, at least for myself this is always the case, to greater or lesser extent: when I do something for a user, and user pays me, I feel somewhat obliged. If he pays me $5/mo, it doesn't mean that our contract is renewed from scratch every month. I feel obliged to do something that would entitle me to issue an invoice next month. It doesn't mean that I will bend over backwards for every user (it just doesn't scale) but nevertheless.

I mean that PodMapper was a service for Craigslist's users, first and foremost. And banning PodMapper means that Craigslist doesn't give a shit about us, its users. Do you really believe that PodMapper did any damage to Craigslist?

latch3• 14 years ago

You say that as if Craigslist doesn't provide any value to consumers as-is. How much do they owe you? Maybe they should pay you to use their website? Maybe they should buy the item you are interested in for you?

You seriously think Craigslist doesn't give a shit about users? Think about what you are saying. Think about the world before Craigslist. It's a free service that even my mother uses. This is the _exact_ sense of entitlement that the OP is talking about.

kika4• 14 years ago

I didn't do a qualified research (I would have told that otherwise) so I can tell for myself. I personally don't use CL exactly because of that - I look at the website and understand that nobody gives a fuck about me here. Not because it doesn't use CSS3, but because it's barely usable. I seriously used CL twice - once I've rented a condo through it (using early PadMapper) and bought a pair of speakers from some local fella. I tried to sell some home furniture and run away in awe. The amount of scam was unsurmountable.

So for me personally PadMapper provided 50% of the total CL positive experience.

I've used ebay over 100 times. Ebay is ripe for disruption, imho, but it's still okay.

You sound very nervous.

jroseattle• 14 years ago

Sorry, but I respectfully disagree. Craigslist doesn't owe "us" a thing. They offer a service, and for those who pay for it, the exchange is made.

Whether or not we think PodMapper is a better service for "us", it's not our choice to make on behalf of Craigslist.

kika4• 14 years ago

Technically, yes, you're correct. But since this is the interaction between users, owners of the service and owners of the 'proxy' service (all humans), not a JSON protocol between Python and JS scripts, there's something beyond just pure technical contract issues. If we go to the HN drinkup and I borrow a $20 from you to get a taxi home, technically I don't owe you anything, as there's no signed IOU (not even a verbal contract if I omit 'until next time'). Non technically I'm an asshole :-)

bherms• 14 years ago

Interesting perspective that I'm inclined to agree with. It seems that large companies with vast amounts of data or users are generally expected to give developers a way to interact, but the reality is that they have the ability and right to control access to said resources however they feel benefits their business best (or even reduces the amount of shit they need to monitor). I've always agreed with Calacanis that startups should not stake their business model on the good nature of a larger service (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc). It seems to me that if Ayn Rand were still around, she'd be writing tomes on the new generation of "data looters" - those who feel entitled to the hard earned data of the large faceless corporations that exist within our tech industry. "Sacrifice your data and business to us poor, helpless developers who are just looking for our next meal. It's for the good of the industry!," they cried.

waterlesscloud7• 14 years ago

Rand would say that both parties in a transaction have the right to negotiate the terms of said transaction.

angryasian4• 14 years ago

both parties would be craigslist and its users in this case. Which craigslist does allow users to post their information where ever they want.

wissler2• 14 years ago

People have a right to complain if they don't agree with a given company's decision. The fact that the company has a legal right to do something, or the (alleged) fact that they are basing their decision on "the bottom line", does not make that decision the right one. And if indeed it is the businesses's prerogative to do this or that, certainly consumers have at least the right to voice their disapproval.

I really would like to stop hearing the whine "but they have a right to do X" every time a business's practices are criticized here on HN.

monkeymace7• 14 years ago

You point is valid about the "but they have a right to do X". I think it does provide good discussion however.

My point wasn't so much that they have the right to do that, but more about when your playing with another company's API don't expect to disrupt them.

Choose a start-up that is already successfully and profitably using a company's API and make your service even better. AKA don't compete with the mothership.

wissler2• 14 years ago

I know I am in the minority, but I happen to think that the central concern of any business ought to be to maximize end-user value. Profits are a means to that end, not the other way around. So I would evaluate the API issue from the perspective of whether it adds value for the user or not, not whether in some myopic accountant's opinion it adds to the "bottom line."

romanows2• 14 years ago

You included Craigslist to get pageviews.

Your own linked articles about that topic are a user only complaining about the legal takedown of a useful tool [1] and another complaint about UX with an included blurb asking startups and users to put their time and data into something better [2]. Nothing about API changes or right to a company's proprietary data.

[1] http://blog.garrytan.com/save-padmapper-craigslist-is-wrong-... [2] http://pandodaily.com/2012/05/30/craigslist-is-squashing-inn...

einhverfr3• 14 years ago

How far do you take this?

If Microsoft decides tomorrow to say "if you want to write Free/Open Source Software, you can't use our API's" do they have a right to do so? What if it is competing with Microsoft software, i.e, "no use of our API's to build competing web browsers and office software" or the like?

I am genuinely asking because I think it's as clear a line as one might think.

monkeymace7• 14 years ago

It is frustrating that due to network effects, for-profit companies, gain a near monopoly on important data types. YouTube owns video, Craigslist owns classifieds, Netflix owns video viewing, etc.

It would be great if there was regulation over certain types of data that would require companies to post back to a central database if they take certain kinds of information. It would be great if there was a device that could help level the playing field.

The point of my post was to highlight that complaining, or being shocked by these companies behavoir is sort of missing the point.

How can we unify and provide access to what we feel to be 'universal' data types?

BobPalmer3• 14 years ago

> It would be great if there was regulation over certain types of data that would require companies to post back to a central database if they take certain kinds of information. It would be great if there was a device that could help level the playing field.

My god, I hope not. The last thing we need is legislation that determines, because I went through the work of building up and creating a successful product and now have a massive amount of valuable data, I have to share it in the interest of 'leveling the playing field'.

I've been on the side of being a content creator with a very successful site, that was promptly scraped by a competitor because I had ammassed a large amount of very useful data. This data that was, through my site, freely available to the public, and the ad revenue helped pay the bills.

So I really don't have a lot of sympathy for someone who had, as part of their business model, the practice of scraping content from someone else's site, nor do I agree that we, as developers, should have free and unrestricted access to someone else's API... they are the ones gathering/storing the data, building the network, etc.. and any use they decide to allow us is at their discretion and a gift. Nothing wrong with that.

asanwal4• 14 years ago

This is a slippery slope. Who defines these universal data types? And if they only are "defined" when someone gets big and powerful, doesn't that reduce the incentive to innovate and build big businesses?

The idea of mandating any such rule is not the solution. It's antithetical to how markets should work.

There's been no company that's managed to dominate forever. LinkedIn, CL, Netflix will be no different. Someone or ones will attack them (perhaps orthogonally) and ultimately they will lose their dominance. That's what happens to incumbents. The market takes care of them. Note: this disruption may or may not be quick.

sirclueless3• 14 years ago

> That's what happens to incumbents. The market takes care of them.

I'm not so sure. Communication tools are fundamentally different than most other products, because their primary value is the number of other people reachable through the service. This isn't true of most other industries, where you can drive a Toyota and I can drive a Ford and everyone is happy.

When your a whole market is based on the ability to interact with other people in some way, and a single company can flip interoperability on and off like a light switch, it has the potential to be a dangerous monopoly. The government stepped in and broke up Ma Bell because of this.

emiliobumachar• 14 years ago

A lot of potential value is materialized by entrepreneurs who expect to entrech themselves in such positions. Many would not run the risks and do the work if they could not, when and if successful, enjoy extraordinary benefit.

theorique• 14 years ago

"I'm from the government and I'm here to help!" - music to every Internet entrepreneur's ears.

nestlequ1k2• 14 years ago

Hell yeah they owe us. Their services would not exist without our user data (netflix excluded).

Internet is still relatively young, but I think eventually we're going to have to have laws that regulate how companies that collect user details allow access to 3rd parties.

Monopolies are illegal for a reason. Companies who build infrastructure have to manage it fairly.

ori_b2• 14 years ago

If there were laws regulating how data is provided, I think that as a company, I'd simply stop providing data entirely. It definitely wouldn't be free.

APIs are nice, but legal hassles aren't worth dealing with.

legutierr• 14 years ago

If you're a company, you'll do what makes you money, regardless of how you feel about regulations that affect you.

Legal hassles are totally worth dealing with if the cost of managing them doesn't exceed your profit. If you're the right company, legal red tape can be a very effective barrier to entry.

jasonlotito7• 14 years ago

> Hell yeah they owe us.

And for that data, they provide you with services. That doesn't mean they should be required to hand that data out to any service that requests it?

I mean, are you really asking that companies like LinkedIn allow free access to it's api's and user data to any 3rd party that requests it?

> Monopolies are illegal for a reason.

Well, no. Monopolies just require additional oversight. Microsoft, for example, didn't get in trouble for being a monopoly, it got in trouble for unfair business practices as a monopoly. More importantly, a monopoly doesn't exist with any of the companies presented in this article.

Really though, your comment fits with the picture at the top of the article.

waterlesscloud7• 14 years ago

"That doesn't mean they should be required to hand that data out to any service that requests it?"

It does, however, mean that it's up for negotiation, if the consumers want it to be.

waterlesscloud7• 14 years ago

Netflix included, actually. Their recommendation engine has been a selling point for them since the start, and it's built on data provided to them by the users.

angryasian4• 14 years ago

then leave and don't use it. No one owes you anything people have free choice to use whatever services they want. If you really feel a company owes you something and isn't doing what you expect don't use it.

niketdesai• 14 years ago

There was definitely some entitlement among the community, but I don't think that should silence the call for better services (and API enforcement) from these providers (or, hopefully alternatives all together).

If there is API access it should be enforced with more care or not made available at all. Personally, I was skeptical that PadMapper would go anywhere (expecting CL to kill the scraping early on). Much to my surprise it stuck around and furthermore was really useful. I'm not mad that it is gone: I read the TOS from CL - it's totally their right to do that. It just hurts end users which is the problem.

And sure, I do believe it's dangerous (and can be misleading to users [like when your data access gets pulled]) to build a product entirely on a platform, but it's almost unavoidable. (That's why you are the platform). Companies like PadMapper are going to try to improve where you have left off. (They probably didn't even register on CL's logs until they queried a lot which might explain the delayed C&D).

Let our entitlement / disappointment be a message to these companies on how to improve their services (ideally they could improve in a way that makes them more money). Or hopefully fuel for others to build competing products.

zacharypinter• 14 years ago

Let's play around a bit with this mentality:

Google: man up and build your own database of everything. Stop indexing our data when we already offer our own search mechanism.

I get that everybody wants to build ajax web apps and ios apps and android apps and so on, but what's the point of the internet except for being the default client-server protocol if we can't create mashups? The whole point of the internet is that data is public and linkable and interconnected. If companies don't want to allow scraping and they don't provide an API for their non-user-specific data then they're defeating the whole point of the internet.

dedward2• 14 years ago

There are tons of reasons why Craigslist, as a business, may have taken this road, from a simple "less hassle for us" down the road to "we're building our own stuff" to. who knows. They're a private business - they can do what they want - we don't get to demand insight.

The vast majority of their users don't give a hoot about whether or not other parties have a way to wrap up craigslist data and do stuff with it.

The whole point of the Internet is that it's a collecation of independently run networks that can communicate. The point of the WWW is to serve hyeprlinked pages to people. There IS NO POINT to the internet - it just happened, and here we are.

zem• 14 years ago

we absolutely get to demand insight. whether they provide it or not is up to them, but demands are free.

crazygringo3• 14 years ago

No.

I might be inclined to agree, if it weren't for network effects.

Once a company reaches a certain size and market share, like Craigslist, would-be competitors are at a competitive disadvantage. Lots of people have created objectively better sites than Craigslist, but they fail because of network lock-in. Normal capitalistic competition is failing.

This is the same thing that happened with railways, utilities, and other natural monopolies. In these cases, it is necessary and proper for the government to step in and regulate access and interoperability.

Sites like Craigslist and LinkedIn have become the new natural monopolies. And demanding that they open up their data is the natural, and right, action to bring back natural market competition that benefits consumers and the world at large.

asanwal4• 14 years ago

Are you suggesting legislation that "levels the playing field"? I'd much rather have this settled by entrepreneurs fighting on the basis of their ideas than some legislator without a clue. No company dominates forever esp in technology.

Craigslist disrupted a huge classified industry without any legislator saying that papers had to "open" up their data. Markets work over time.

cookiecaper2• 14 years ago

>No company dominates forever esp in technology.

I'm not so sure (for reasonable values of "forever"). From what I see, once some software hits a critical mass, it's nearly inextricable.

Look at Microsoft. Before they became a major player, the dominant OS and computer system would seem to shift every couple of years; Amiga, Commodore, Apple, etc., but once Microsoft became a major player they never really lost their grip. They continue to maintain that grip simply because so many people were familiarized on their systems and so much software was written for those systems. Does anyone really believe that someone looks at OS X and Windows these days and decides that Windows is objectively superior? Most people, even technical people who hate Apple's MO, would admit that OS X is better on its merits alone.

The reason that MS has dominated and continues to dominate is because of the software available for the platform. It's all about lock-in. People don't use Windows because it has more compelling features than OS X, they use Windows because they want to play games, buy software off the shelf and know it will run without any problems, or run their company's internal software.

Let's take Facebook as another example. For years there was a pretty constant, roughly bi-annual shift in the most prominent "social networking" site; LiveJournal, Friendster, Xanga, etc., until Facebook. Around 2008 Facebook began eating MySpace's lunch and Facebook remains undisputed social networking champ today with no signs of slowage.

I'm concerned that Facebook is the new Microsoft -- it has become the de-facto standard, and despite any number of superior features that may be developed in other systems, it doesn't look like anyone is going to be able to challenge Facebook seriously. Some would say that Google was perhaps the most worthy challenger, but even they have failed to really make a dent despite the fact that most of the world visits their search and email services daily.

I'm not sure exactly where that critical mass gets hit but I think it's hard to reverse once it happens. Maybe it's something like, "Once your grandparents use a certain program because everyone else does, it's relatively safe to call it 'ingrained'." I know that my grandma had no compulsion to create a MySpace profile even though she constantly [attempts to] check[s] Facebook now, and I also know that it'd be extremely difficult to train her to use a non-Windows interface.

crazygringo3• 14 years ago

But the point is, entrepreneurs are currently fighting on the basis of their ideas, and failing, even though their ideas are better than Craigslist, because Craigslist is winning merely because of network lock-in, not because of innovation.

Craigslist disrupted the classifieds industry because it had first-mover advantage in a new medium, the Internet. It now abuses that advantage in order to not innovate or even compete.

The market is not working over time -- proof is how everyone complains about how crappy Craigslist is.

But a solution, for example, could be something like: legislators could force companies with over, say, 25% market share, that are mainly based on user-generated content, to not be able to sue other companies if those companies re-display information originally input by users, that is publicly visible on the site.

This wouldn't force Craigslist to alter its behavior one bit. But it would allow entrepreneurs to actually fight once again on the basis of their ideas, as opposed to whoever had first-mover advantage and subsequent network lock-in.

jbigelow762• 14 years ago

> Lots of people have created objectively better sites than Craigslist, but they fail because of network lock-in.

There is no lock in. A buyer or seller is free to move place their listing or make their purchase from any number of alternatives regardless and Craigslist can't stop them.

> Sites like Craigslist and LinkedIn have become the new natural monopolies.

Mark Zuckerburg would probably disagree with that statement. In 2005 MySpace would have been the equivalent of Craigslist, massive network, shitty design and no data portability. If the value provided by alternatives to CL were as superior as most HN readers believe them to be then END USERS would see that as well and migrate just like MySpace users migrated to FB. But they don't so CL retains its dominance, the failure of alternatives is not indication that CL is cheating or doing anything even remotely monopolistic.

> And demanding that they open up their data is the natural, and right, action to bring back natural market competition that benefits consumers and the world at large.

The data is open, just not in a format you think you are entitled to it in. It's open in that the same poster that put their listing on CL can post the same listing on alternatives, they just choose not to. Convince the seller or buyer of the value you bring to the table and they will open their data to you as well.

Many HN readers have reached the conclusion that convenience and competition are the same thing. They aren't.

sirclueless3• 14 years ago

    If the value provided by alternatives to CL were as superior as most
    HN readers believe them to be then END USERS would see that as well and
    migrate just like MySpace users migrated to FB.

That's not necessarily true. I see network effects as something of a negative externality, one that is hit particularly hard by the tragedy of the commons. The problem is that even if every single person on Facebook decided that YourBookSpace was a better website that provided more value, no one would leave because until everyone else followed, your network wouldn't be there.

This type of dilemma is known as a collective action problem. When these problems arise the best way forward is often to have a superauthority such as the government step in for everyone's benefit. For example, even though it is generally accepted that free trade increases the world's prosperity when it is practiced around the world, individual countries occasionally see immediate advantage in adopting mercantilist or protectionist economic policies. The GATT is an attempt to provide a superauthority to stop such practices, because the immediate gains possible when a country embargoes an enemy are not as valuable as a system where the majority of actors behave in open and unbiased ways.

The free market doesn't work on its own. When there are systemic problems in the way actors conduct business, judiciously applied regulation can help promote the public interest.

geoffhill• 14 years ago

This attitude is extremely anticompetitive. Big guys like Craigslist need to give away their customer base just because they're big? That doesn't make sense to me.

csallen• 14 years ago

You're taking anti-monopolistic sentiments to an extreme.

1. The goal of almost every rational business is to achieve a monopoly in a certain space. If the public or the government had the power to systematically break up every company who comes close to success, there would be little incentive to start a business. Perfectly-competitive industries are awful for business owners. You have to draw a line in the sand, before-which monopolies as tolerable. I don't think Craigslist is anywhere near that line.

2. A huge part of anti-trust laws means that companies engage in anti-competitive practices. To the best of my knowledge, Craigslist isn't doing this. It's simply refusing to willingly participate in its own destruction.

3. I question your usage of the words "normal" and "natural". First you claim that monopolies indicate the failure of normal capitalistic competition. Then you claim that monopolies naturally occur. Then you claim that we need to act to bring back natural market competition. So which is it? Are monopolies "natural" or is competition? And why does something being "natural" make it good?

sliverstorm5• 14 years ago

And why does something being "natural" make it good?

So, so many people have forgotten this. Thanks for pointing it out.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy

crazygringo3• 14 years ago

I don't think you understood any of my points.

1. No, the goal of most businesses is not generally to achieve a monopoly, the goal of most businesses is market share or just profit. A company can have 100% market share and not be a monopoly, if the barriers to entry for new market participants are comparable to the original barriers to entry for the current winner (so there aren't network effects, or prohibitive capital investment relative to divided market size).

2. I never talked about anti-trust laws or anti-competitive practives. I talked about natural monopolies [1], which have nothing whatsoever to do with those. You're thinking of artificial monopolies, something totally different.

3. I said "normal capitalistic competition" in the sense of competition outside of special cases (like monopolies). And "natural monopoly" is an economics term [1]. I used neither in a normative sense.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly

superuser2• 14 years ago

No. Craigslist is an objectively better product because it has a better network.

Consumers do not get to choose alternative railways. They can chose alternative classefeids services; those services are just inferior (maybe they have a better UI but they aren't as good at selling things)

mufumbo• 14 years ago

I believe it's really CL problem. They won't ever find a better mobile engineer or someone who will even spend 10% of the time I've spent hacking something cool.

If you got a C&D as well and isn't happy about it, you should go ahead and make a better product. Otherwise you can go to work for one of their competitors. That's the beauty of being a hacker.

Just make it sure that online classifieds is your passion.

egallardo• 14 years ago

I see both sides to the argument. Craigslist is acting in their own self interest as PadMapper was by using CL's data to add value to their service.

While unfortunate, the move by Craiglist isn't surprising. They have done this repeatedly. The situation PadMapper is in is inevitable for any entity that isn't self-sustaining..

PadMapper should be working as quickly as possible to capitalize on the added attention this has caused and start letting users input their listings directly..

davesims• 14 years ago

Saying that a company has every right to execute whatever policy they deem necessary to defend their bottom-line interests is not the same as saying that the community they do business in cannot call them out when those same policies are executed in an underhanded or deceptive way.

Sure, they don't owe third-parties anything, and personally I think it's folly to base all or even a significant portion of your business on data or functionality that you don't control.

But that doesn't mean that the community corporations do business in must always just shut up about it when, for instance, one company pretends to support a third-party's efforts for two months, just long enough to get a good hard look at their user experience, financial standing and business model, and then summarily shut them down without recourse.

"It's just business" is fine, but it's not a get-out-of-shame-free card. Just as third-parties can't complain when an API is yanked out from under them like Lucy with a football, so corporations shouldn't get butt-hurt when the community they work with looks at them and says, "the way you did that really stinks."

cabalamat• 14 years ago

> Start-ups should stop feeling entitled to other’s companies data

Other companies' data, or other companies' users' data?

monkeymace7• 14 years ago

fixed. thanks.

angryasian4• 14 years ago

once you post it on craigslist it becomes their data. That doesn't stop you from posting the same data to other sites. Craigslist doesn't offer this service but you can freely post your data to other sites, but by no means is craigslist supposed to offer the data that you gave to them to other sites.

ravisarma• 14 years ago

The argument (like all "nobody is entitled" arguments) is self-defeating. If others are not to whine about X, what validates the author's whining about such others? What the author offers is an explanation of why corporations offer and revoke features like APIs. I think that is fairly well understood. That does not answer why others should not complain when that happens ("such is the world" is not an answer). It is as much a tactic of businesses to use pressure to open up APIs as it is a tactic of other businesses to offer or not offer them. What the spurned group are doing is really is making an appeal to the users of LinkedIn, etc, who are the "owners" of the data. Perhaps the author does not really wish to lecture others on entitlements, but means that such complaining is not effective. In which case, some data would help.

monkeymace7• 14 years ago

It is important be wary of the foundation you build your business on. If you are building the core of your businesses around another company's API service you should be prepared to offer concrete value to that service's users in a way that doesn't directly compete with the main service, or do anything to directly or indirectly promote their competitors.

And, if you go against that approach you shouldn't be surprised or indignant when you get shut down. You will have a much better chance building a truly complimentary product, rather then rallying users to boycott a service or demand changes in policy.

To me it's sort of like someone who always drives over the speed limit by at least 50mph, and one day they finally get pulled over and are given a ticket. But, because they were never 'caught' before, they just feel like they were entitled to always drive that fast, and instead of just paying the ticket, they try to get the speed limit laws changed, or to have a judge throw out their ticket and let them keep driving however they want.

When you use another company's API, you are driving on someone else's road, and for better of worse you need to play by their rules.

So if you want to drive fast with no consequences, build your own road. And if your interested in 'exploiting' or piggybacking on someone else infrastructure, don't do something to call too much attention to your self.

PadMapper - started providing other listings that were not from craigslist. GoodFilms - providing information and data to other movies services besides netflix Pealk - were undercutting the price point for LinkedIN premium features.

waxjar• 14 years ago

I think it's helpful to make the assumed premises from both sides explicit.

One is "a website like website x does anything it does to generate profit". That would be the side the OP takes. The other is "a website like website x does anything it does to make the world / the internet a better place", something like that. I think an open source enthusiast would take this position.

Obviously people value these ideals differently (otherwise this discussion wouldn't be there) and therefore voice different opinions. With that in mind, I think it's easier to evaluate the opinions of others on this matter.

dotjinks• 14 years ago

Ah, Craigslist sucks. 1. Their interface sucks. 2. They won't fix it. 3. They won't let anyone else solve it for them. If third parties are not supposed to scrap data for their users from Craigslist CL's Legal team should be all over sending a C&D to Google! Sure that's not going to happen because it would be stupid, but so is killing off Padmapper. A great interface that keeps Craigslist in mind when someone moves into a new place and wants a TV or Couch, or even a date. They will look back and wonder why they didn't try harder to grow with these third parties instead of killing them.

einhverfr3• 14 years ago

Geez, I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand who can argue with the idea that businesses need to have a general autonomy regarding their business deals?

On the other, I think that when you have a businesses creating industries around themselves, that a significant amount of that autonomy has to be abridged.

Take for example Ebay and how they strongly encourage Paypal. If you run into a problem with Paypal, and your business has a significant presence on Ebay, that's a pretty heavy cost, and I don't think Ebay should be able to say "so long, tough luck."

m0th87• 14 years ago

And nobody owes Craigslist, LinkedIn, or Netflix anything either. They can act as shitty as they want, but nobody should be surprised when it gives them bad press.

saumil07• 14 years ago

Most succinct and best comment - the original post is a tempest in a teapot. Craigslist is free to optimize their lock-in on their marketplace and web-savvy users are free to bitch about the effects thereof (I did on Twitter twice over), most likely to little effect in the short to medium term. Maybe enough complaints and CL will get its act together. Maybe it won't. But that's fine! Let's continue speaking out against CL's uncool behavior and hope for the best.

joe_the_user• 14 years ago

Wait! Wait a gosh-darn second here!

Craiglist is available by RSS and would not be too hard to scrape. You want "API access", you got it. Unlike Facebook, I haven't heard of anyone tossed off Craigslist for using a script to access the data Craigslist is happy to give out for free.

Ah, but you don't want "API access", you want a license to resell the data - and for free! You want different terms of use. Etc. Wah, wah, wah.

Guess what? That's different. Obviously.

mathattack• 14 years ago

There's no obligation for any company to create an ecosystem about themselves. It's also not a universal strategy that always maximizes value. 3rd parties can walk with their feet when they don't like it. If companies are unreasonable, they get punished in the market. Why is this so controversial?

korimako• 14 years ago

All these companies were built on an infrastructure which tax payer's money funded the development of before it promised to make a profit. More taxpayer money was put into the development of the internet than the Manhattan project. Private companies are reaping the benefit - in my opinion they owe it us to keep the system open, and API's are just a token gesture in that direction.

LVB• 14 years ago

From Lessig's "The Future of Ideas" concerning the lawsuit against Bidder's Edge for scraping eBay data:

Both sides had a point, and while my bias is with [Bidder's Edge], I don’t mean to deny the plausibility of a different regime. What I do deny, however, is that the answer to this question is obvious.

ianb• 14 years ago

In the marketplace consumer expectations can get higher, a sense of entitlement develops, and that entitlement can be the valid effect of genuine progress. Not because the providers have to satisfy our sense of entitlement, but because they do, because that's what it takes to compete until at some point that's what's expected just to play the game. Food providers at some point stopped competing on food safety because everyone demanded everything be safe. We started expecting cars to be very reliable, and if someone makes an unreliable car then fuck caveat emptor, it's not going to become a matter of whether some consumers are willing to make that compromise and some are not – instead your brand becomes shit and you have to beg people to come back, if you can at all. Right now we don't have that expectation about APIs; but some people want us to, we are moving that direction, and maybe we will get there. Or maybe we'll get somewhere else; progress however ensures that we will get somewhere, that consumers will find something new about which to feel entitled.

And yeah, these companies don't "owe" us anything, but consumers (even the subset of developer-consumers) can still get pissed off at them and say shit and that's the fucking market. And maybe it won't mean anything, maybe it'll all fade away... and maybe it won't. That's the risk those brands are taking. It's our market-based prerogative to bitch about whatever the hell we want to bitch about, using whatever hyperbole we want, with any sense of entitlement that we've acquired.

If someone starts sending mail bombs to these companies because they aren't tending their APIs as we'd like, then that's coercion. But there's no coercion here, this is just people offering their opinions. So quit yer whining about our whining, the internet has entitled us to whine as much as we fucking want to, and has offered market-based ways to lift or bury that whining.

A1kmm• 14 years ago

We don't owe them anything either, and yet computer crimes laws make it illegal to circumvent any technical measures they put in place to stop competitors from getting information they make public on the site.

I think less people would be concerned about the issue if it was just Craigslist putting up technical measures (e.g. blocking API access) to competitors, but competitors were free to rent VPSes or pay people for use of their IP address to access the data for scraping. If there was no law against scraping information from websites that is available to arbitrary members of the public (provided that you comply with copyright laws post-scraping), then there would be no issue.

So the real issue is not that Craigslist owes anyone anything, but rather, that the government is enforcing laws on their behalf to entrench the network effects of existing businesses against new entrants to the market.

rasengan0• 14 years ago

I started using Craigslist in the late 1990's before it got 'popular'; some dates, got an apt, sold a few things, bought a few. The big www thing was slowing muscling in on newspaper classified turf but not enough of a threat. There was a sense of community like the Well or BBS dialup days of olde; people trusted it. I think people value routine and endurance and CL was/is? seen as a place to community exchange. The heavy text based simple Web 0.5 UI hasn't changed much since then and yet users still come like people still use vi or emacs. They all drank the koolaid! 20 yrs later, I hear all this talk of data/API entitlement and efficiency is the new Winning! I don't get it? If CL is so lame and inefficient why can't these smart young whippersnappers replicate such a model of community BBS? Grow/Roll your own, collect your own data as the article suggests. FFS, there is no monopoly in the hood. There is some natural selection out thar in the intertubes.

perlpimp2• 14 years ago

I've been mulling over few solutions for craigslist problem and there are few technical solutions to flaunt craiglist's service. I am building service along similar lines of what padmapper did and already writing up those for our service.

Moral is if you quit, you are a quitter. If you are useful to people find some other solution implement it asap and keep rolling. I am not yet living in the sates but if I truly believe that my service is useful to people I'd just go and try to do it differently and move on with that. Never give up, especially if you are doing something that is good. If you're causing rucks and are being useful maybe that might be an opportunity of a lifetime...

my 2c

dredmorbius3• 14 years ago

By the same coin, we owe Craigslist, LinkedIn, Netflix, and others nothing.

That's a two-way street.

As crazygringo pointed out, a very large part of the value of these firms comes not from their technology but simply from their market position, dominating a specific niche, and generating network effects as a consequence of size.

In a market in which there's a tendency toward monopoly: utility services, telecommunications, desktop/personal software, business office software, business systems software, advertising networks, publishing, broadcasting, pop music/entertainment, agricultural middleman, major chip foundries, pharmaceuticals, a large part of the value accruing to the firm/organization is a consequence of the interest / business which society as a whole has invested in the monopoly.

At the same time, twin abuses of monopoly pricing (which accrues a greater marginal profit to the monopolist) or anti-competitive actions (driving out competition by way of locally (time or region) undercutting prices, contractually discouraging or prohibiting customers from doing business with competitors) exacts an additional cost on society as a whole.

I've long been a fan of Craigslist. I think that their business exemplifies some of the best of how to conduct an online business (leverage technology massively, but also rely on community goodwill to conduct many business operations, including removing of bad/fraudulent listings). While I'm not a particular critic of CL's page format -- they've held to the KISS principle in the extreme -- it's become increasingly clear that for many types of listings, there are some very evident improvements which could be made.

My feeling is that CL are squandering an opportunity in their dealings with Padmapper. The Padmapper interface, for apartment and real-estate listings, is vastly superior to CL's existing listing format. While there is a business risk to CL in allowing another party to utilize its comprehensive listings (for which CL would reasonably be able to assert compilation copyrights, answering some here), I really believe it would be to CL's benefit to find a reasonable business relationship under which it could utilized Padmapper's interface. Whether that's a data exchange agreement, a purchase or leasing of the technology, or simply a reinvention of it, I don't particularly care (I also owe Padmapper nothing in particular).

And if that's not the case, then, well, CL show a case of a market which, if a feasible business case can be made, is ripe for disruption.

gulfie• 14 years ago

Some pathology of codependency is based on people doing for someone else what that someone else should do for themselves.

This is also how one destroys markets. Say for example dumping cheap corn on markets to destroy the livelihood of local famers, then when they are gone jacking up the prices far above what would have been possible when the local farmers were still operating. This and other monopolistic practices are illegal and generally accepted to be morally reprehensible in most of the world.

There is a implicit deal that is being struck between suppliers and consumers. That what we get today we can get tomorrow. TQM style supply contracts often call this out explicitly building long term positive relationships between supplier and consumer. Unilaterally changing the deal is bad for buisnes by leaveing the overall environment unable to reliably plan or predict future actions.

Craigslist, LinkedIn, Netflix, and others don't owe us anything.

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