Craigslist begins to roll out PadMapper-like map view for apartment listings

http://venturebeat.com/2012/10/04/craigslist-map-view/

by nthitz • 14 years ago

31 53 14 years ago

venturebeat.com

kylelibra• 14 years ago

Love this headline. For those unaware, Craigslist is suing PadMapper for using their data.

kefs• 14 years ago

> Craigslist is suing 3Taps for using Google's Data.

blhack• 14 years ago

I would feel bad for the PadMapper maintainer, except for the fact that he seemed so self-entitled here in the threads.

graue4• 14 years ago

Really? He seemed very humble to me and consistently expressed a sincere wish to come to an agreement with Craigslist. The impression I got was that CL couldn't possibly have sued a nicer guy.

Hilyin• 14 years ago

Hope padmapper comes up victorious, CL is being a huge bully it seems.

redthrowaway• 14 years ago

How are they being a bully? It's their service. If they want to kick someone off it and develop a competitor, that's their prerogative.

This is just another example of why you shouldn't base your startup on someone else's product. If you're successful, they'll develop a competitor and use their position to push you out.

Karunamon• 14 years ago

>How are they being a bully? It's their service. If they want to kick someone off it and develop a competitor, that's their prerogative.

So? They're still being a bully. Just because you're acting within the confines of the law and your rights doesn't necessarily mean you aren't being a dick about it.

graue4• 14 years ago

When you look at how badly CL's site has stagnated, and what a poor view most apartment searchers have of it, and then you look at the fact that nearly everyone uses it anyway, it's obvious we're dealing with a monopolist. No one who has real competition can get away with keeping their service that shitty.

Apologies for resorting to profanity, but I find Craigslist's behavior completely odious and am continually disappointed to see so many on HN defending them. For a more articulate argument, see 3taps' claims of anticompetitive behavior: http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/24/3taps-files-craigslist-coun..., scribd document at the bottom, pages 25-30.

mikegirouard• 14 years ago

I'm speculating here, but perhaps this was the root of CL suing PadMapper in the first place.

minouye• 14 years ago

They've been looking for a front-end developer with "integrated mapping technology" experience since early this year, so not a completely unreasonable guess.

http://www.craigslist.org/about/craigslist_is_hiring

dumb-dumb2• 14 years ago

You think they had this functionality in the works before PadMapper?

It certinaly doesn't look good for CL, IMO, if they only started working on it after PadMapper started gaining momentum.

It's an interesting question.

bmm6o2• 14 years ago

Only if by "look[ing] good", you mean it changes your opinion of them. From most perspectives it doesn't really matter when they decided to move in this direction since it's their data. It's the same thing we've seen over and over, where a small guys builds on someone else's platform, and the platform provider uses their inherent advantages to take over.

vijayr• 14 years ago

They needn't have sued. If their implementation was as good as padmapper or better, then padmapper would've lost their audience anyway.

We could argue whether it is good or bad for platforms to copy a feature and push services like padmapper out, but it is still their platform. But a big guy suing a small guy, especially when he was making the service better definitely looks like bullying.

dm8• 14 years ago

CL have eyeballs, content and audience. So I'm not surprised that they are doing this. They'll also come victorious. Content is king. As always!

philfreo• 14 years ago

Except it sucks compared to PadMapper.

alooPotato• 14 years ago

Actually its pretty good - solves 90% of the use cases for me. And it feels much faster than padmapper.

wave• 14 years ago

I was almost certain[1] that Craigslist was working on PadMapper like interface and it was the reason they sued. They should have done the right thing and hire/buy one person company PadMapper.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4149263

flatline34• 14 years ago

I don't see why the "right" thing would be to reward someone for breaking your ToS and stealing your database as a means of creating a potential competitor to your business.

On top of that, even if PadMapper had not been slimy, I don't see why it's "right" to pay a sum for something you're perfectly capable of building yourself for less time, money, effort, and headache than what an acquisition would cost.

derefr• 14 years ago

No, of course, it's not like Craigslist has done some damage to PadMapper and now needs to buy them as recompense or anything. But buying them would be the... gallant thing to do?

That is, it isn't so much what Craigslist "needs" to do to be in the right, here, but it's what they could do to be in the very right. To be better than any other random classifieds company, to generate viral PR, to be something you'd be happy to say you use, etc.

ataggart• 14 years ago

1. No one needs to agree to a ToS to read CL data.

2. One cannot "steal" publicly accessible data.

3. A search interface with resulting links to the relevant post on CL; if PadMapper was a "competitor" then so is google.

forgotusername4• 14 years ago

Moral of the story, yet again, ad infinitum: don't waste your time watering somebody's else's garden. Yes it's the Internet and technically data is practically almost free to reproduce, but this doesn't imply a trouble-free right to steal your neighbour's database and proclaim your 100 line Javascript hack a startup. Borrowing content like that only works when you have lawyers, cash, and an excess of testosterone or stupidity (see also: YouTube)

JoeCortopassi• 14 years ago

This applies to business in general. If you're idea can be trivially reproduced by a semi-competent competitor, then you will find yourself in a heap of trouble once you have any measure of success.

sliverstorm2• 14 years ago

Wait, are you arguing YouTube is an unworthy hack? They have got to have a pretty big infrastructure to manage and re-encode all that video.

forgotusername4• 14 years ago

Perhaps you're unfamiliar with the early history of YouTube

qq662• 14 years ago

More specifically, if you're infringing something, it should be to gain momentum or some other asset that you can use once your ability to infringe goes away, which it will if/when you become successful.

andrewljohnson• 14 years ago

Isn't that sort of a horrible, morally bankrupt thing to say?

If there is no better reason to infringe than you want to make some profit, then you're just a scumbag. I'd hope there was some other moral stance you are taking before you infringe.

YouTubers will surely say the ends justify the means, that the TV monopoly needed disruption, and it was good for consumers to break down traditional ideas about copyrights. Maybe that's just a thin veneer on greed, but it's a start at least.

forgotusername4• 14 years ago

..and under no circumstance consider theft an actual strategy. AFAIK it only worked for YouTube due to the virginal DMCA still receiving initial court testing, and probably only then due also to the company's prolonged ability to afford legal representation.

wwweston2• 14 years ago

While I agree about the garden-watering/sharecropping, "steal" is a pretty tenuous description of what Padmapper was doing, and to the extent it applies, any kind of link database with a digest of associated content is also theft.

welder• 14 years ago

By making CLMapper I feel partially responsible for motivating CraigsList to improve user experience. Also, CLMapper is 1330 lines of javascript not 100 and you were probably talking about PadMapper anyway. ;)

yummies• 14 years ago

I was kind of hoping craigslist was cooking up something awesome, and waiting for the product to be fully polished and "magical, revolutionary" before launching it. unfortunately, this just feels like they rushed out of the door with the first thing they could mash up. specifically, two shortcomings: 1. as far as i can tell, it doesn't show you what listings you've already clicked on, unlike every map based apartment search out there 2. it doesn't appear to be loading the data as you scroll around the map - it loads it all at once up front. of course it's nice that you don't have to wait for it to load as you scroll, but that means there's an upper bound to the number of listings you can search through, and just goes to show how incomplete their implementation is. i'm guessing that's why it isn't offered in NY yet - too many listings to serve all at once

MartinCron• 14 years ago

You just used "fully polished", "magical" and "revolutionary" in the same sentence as craigslist. There's no precedent for any of those adjectives.

beatpanda2• 14 years ago

So, should PadMapper countersue Craigslist for anti-competitive behavior?

I think so, but I have a vindictive streak.

tptacek• 14 years ago

Under exactly what theory of law would PadMapper be able to file such a suit?

Late edit: By claiming Craigslist is a monopoly.

graue4• 14 years ago

3taps did countersue Craigslist for anti-competitive behavior, and the filing is well worth a read.

http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/24/3taps-files-craigslist-coun...

HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4567713

I doubt PadMapper will join the suit, though.

dchuk• 14 years ago

Protecting what is yours is not anti-competitive

beatpanda2• 14 years ago

But what Craigslist claims is theirs is actually other people's data. Although this protection isn't currently enshrined in U.S. law, I'd like to think my data belongs to me.

paulrademacher• 14 years ago

Nicely done. I never had any problems with Craigslist on HousingMaps. In fact, they were always quite helpful, e.g. unblocking my IP from their scraper list every year or so.

Craigslist begins to roll out PadMapper-like map view for apartment listings

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