Slashdot Log In
97 of Top 100 Classified Sites Are Craigslist
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Apr 06, 2009 03:54 PM
from the newspapers-still-dying dept.
from the newspapers-still-dying dept.
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."
Related Stories
[+]
Craigslist Kills Erotic Services Ads, Will Launch Adult Section 390 comments
CWmike writes "Submitting to mounting legal pressure, Craigslist has announced that it will remove the Erotic Services category from its classified advertising Web site within seven days. The move comes just two and a half weeks after Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craigslist, told Computerworld that the company had no intention of removing the category. While it's taking down the category, it will be launching a new category called Adult Services, for which each posting will be manually reviewed before it appears. 'Unsurprisingly, but completely contrary to some of the sensationalistic journalism we've seen these past few weeks, the record is clear that use of Craigslist classifieds is associated with far lower rates of violent crime than print classifieds, let alone rates of violent crime pertaining to American society as a whole,' said Buckmaster in a blog post today. 'We are optimistic that the new balance struck today will be an acceptable compromise from the perspective of the constituencies, and for the diverse US communities that value and rely upon Craigslist.'"
[+]
Technology: Craigslist Fires Back Over Adult Services Accusations 258 comments
Craigslist has fired back at South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster in an open letter defending the company's policies and procedures surrounding the much debated "adult services." Stating not only the measures that have been taken to minimize illegal behavior, CEO Jim Buckmaster suggests that Craigslist is doing much better at minimizing questionable ads than other major competitors like Yahoo!, Google, and others. "Mr McMaster, I strongly recommend you reconsider and retract your remarks, and positively affirm that you have no intention of launching criminal investigations aimed at any of these upstanding companies, because in truth none of them are deserving of such treatment. [...] We're willing to accept our share of criticism, but wrongfully accusing craigslist of criminal misconduct is simply beyond the pale. We would very much appreciate an apology at your very earliest convenience. As I'm sure would all of the other fine companies whose executives you've called out as criminals."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Classifieds Traffic Up Since Recession (Score:5, Interesting)
The news is that they think the recession is causing this thrift explosion. From the article:
So it seems the recession is more or less rescuing some classifieds sites while acting as a rocket booster for Craigslist. This meshes well with last week's info about Craigslist replacing MySpace as the top U.S. search term.
And from Hitwise's blog:
Market share of US Internet Visits increased 90% to the Craigslist Cities custom category year over year in February 2009 while visits to All Other Classifieds grew 22%.Visits to All Other Classifieds had been declining for most of 2008 with visits starting to increase in January and February. This suggests that the worsening US economy may be boosting visits to classifieds websites, and contributing to the recent up tick in visits to both Craigslist Cities and All Other Classifieds.
I'm not sold on their evidence. I don't see a huge jump [google.com] since February of '08 in search popularity. Why do we do this with percentages? We break them down into categories and play the telephone game to distort them for the sole purpose of shock-and-awe reporting leading to ad revenue?
Re:Classifieds Traffic Up Since Recession (Score:5, Informative)
What? Did you even look at the graph you linked to? Sure, it's fairly steady growth, but even just a quick eyeing of the graph shows at least a 50% growth (and that's a VERY conservative estimate -- looks more like 75% to me, but I didn't want to push it).
I don't know about you, but that's pretty damn significant to me.
Parent
Re:Classifieds Traffic Up Since Recession (Score:5, Funny)
Man, I just read the article title, and I was confused as to why anything on Craigslist would be considered 'classified' by any government, let alone that it would have 97% of all online classified data.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I'm not sold on their evidence. I don't see a huge jump [google.com] since February of '08 in search popularity.
You don't? It went from around .75 to at least 1.25 which is at least a gain of around 67%
Re: (Score:2)
By "Craigslist Cities custom category" do you mean visits to individual cities on craiglist.org (like chicago.craigslist.org)? Or is there some other feature there? I mean, that seems kind of obvious if that is what you mean because the whole point of Craiglist is localized classifieds.
I also don't think most people are going to use Google to search the local Craigslist site. That would be kind of worthless as the Google hits are often out of date (just try searching for some "odd yet valuable but can sell
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Classifieds Traffic Up Since Recession (Score:5, Interesting)
Did anyone else notice the largest drop on that graph occurred right after this article -
Craigslist to crack down on prostitution ads [whdh.com]
Parent
Re:Classifieds Traffic Up Since Recession (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe they like being ripped off in the US or something. It seems to me using a system like that you might as well set fire to your money
you don't get it.
Craigslist isn't a place to buy stuff. It's a place to FIND stuff. You don't trust the #@$#!ing craigslist ad; you make a contact with a real person, and go from there.
ebay's kinda a joke --> used electronics, scams, and crap, all peddled by folks who only care about thin numbers that give themselves a veneer of respectability.
Craigslist tosses that, and the fees, and just connects the buyers and the sellers. It's the internet in its purest, and most open, form.
Parent
Re:Classifieds Traffic Up Since Recession (Score:4, Interesting)
Unfortunately, on London craigslist at least, you are more likely to get responses from Africa trying to scam you than real responses to your ad. From a recent ad I got three responses from Abuja, Nigeria (according to IP), and none from genuine buyers, in spite of an instruction saying 'local buyers only' and requiring pickup.
This sort of site requires a critical mass of genuine people to be using it, and in certain places a lot of the traffic is probably caused more by scams than real items for sale. As you say, it's the internet it its purest, most open, form, and like email and web discussions, it's been taken over by scammers, spammers and blow-hards.
Parent
How many are scammers? (Score:2)
I wonder how much of this increase in "traffic" is just Nigerian scammers trying to get you to ship your item overseas.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
In other news: (Score:5, Insightful)
As Prostitutes Turn to Craigslist, Law Takes Notice [nytimes.com]. 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.
Re:In other news: (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah and this is the problem as I see it.
Craigslist made the economics of prostitution more decentralized so cops were busting fewer hookers even though the sex industry in a lot of towns was thriving with Craigslist. So the cops started to take notice when their revenue dropped off. In some towns over 50% of the revenue comes from fines levied against the citizens for non-violent crimes and anything that disrupts that will make politicians poke their local county sheriffs and police departments to do something about it. Look at your county coffers and see how much comes in from traffic tickets and criminal fines for my county it is nearly 30% of the revenue. Making so much of county and city budgets dependent on vice and traffic crimes has made it profitable to exacerbate problems that will encourage it while not directly encouraging it. -- See drug war, cheap alcohol and 1 second yellow lights.
We also had a massive decrease in violence against prostitutes and charges filed for pimping because craigslist made it far easier to go solo and be safe from crazies by filtering out them by email and phone before meeting. Sort of like speed dating, now these women are back out working for pimps and working the streets. This sort of action by the police community against sex workers is abhorrent and is bringing back old problems that were going away with Craigslist being used by escorts.
Parent
Good Game, "old media", it was mediocre... (Score:5, Insightful)
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
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... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Good Game, "old media", it was mediocre... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Good Game, "old media", it was mediocre... (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [gibsonandlily.com] 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.
Parent
Re:Good Game, "old media", it was mediocre... (Score:5, Informative)
Change your /. prefs. Other than the sometimes lame colors they use, I don't see any of that silliness, once I'm logged in.
Parent
Re:Good Game, "old media", it was mediocre... (Score:5, Insightful)
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."
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Craigslist's UI is very underrated. It isn't pretty to look at- so people don't realize what an effective UI it is. It doesn't constantly foist the trendiest UI gimmick of the week on everybody. It's ugly. But it doesn't needlessly confuse you or piss you off. And the ugliness sort of goes along with the message- if you wanted pretty style sheets you'd be getting less good deals elsewhere- that's what those drab colors are telling you. Ebay is butt ugly for the same reason. You really feel like you're suffe
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
—Antoine de St. Exupery
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Gumtree is a lot more popular than Craigslist in Britain.
I guess it is the network effect again. Gumtree has a lot more British ads, so more Brits visit it. People put their ads their because more people see them.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"If that's the level of journalism we can expect from these outfits in the 21st century, then fuck 'em."
So you are advocating no journalism at all, or do think Huffington Post is the answer to our problem? Tyrants and despots will certainly like your point of view.
One problem main stream media had in the first term of the Bush administration was 9/11 and the frenzy that followed which pretty much muzzled all dissenting view points until the chinks started showing in their armor with Katrina and the wheels
The truth revealed! (Score:3, Funny)
97 of Top 100 Classified Sites are Craigslist
So THAT's the top secret info Uncle Sam puts on SIPRnet hmm? People going through the trouble get get a government security clearance must be really disappointed.
Classified? (Score:2, Interesting)
Count again (Score:2)
when the adult section is removed.
It's nothing new folks, everyone knows the most popular search word on the Internet.
Finally indexed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I may be off here, but part of the reason of the reason Craigslist may be gaining popularity is because its listings are finally well indexed by search engines, where as of a year or so ago, they weren't [searchenginejournal.com]- now when I search for an item or service, Craigslist actually shows up in the relevant hits! The more users who see Craigslist in google results, the more likely they maybe are to list with it.
Sorry - SearchEngineJournal.com link here [searchenginejournal.com]
What are the Remaining Three? (Score:2)
Post links to a blog which links to a PDF "report" that's basically a press release. None of which do anything other than fawn over Craigslist.
So what are the remaining three sites?
Mostly unrelated.. but No Banners/Web Advertisment (Score:2)
Re:Mostly unrelated.. but No Banners/Web Advertism (Score:4, Interesting)
Well maybe,just maybe, that's the very reason that they're so popular! They give users what they want, not what someone in marketing/advertising thinks users ought to want, or what will give them a few more ad dollars but drive users off. They're old cliches but it seems silly to argue with success or fix what's not broken.
I'm going to make a very broad statement here: the most successful parts of the internet give users content, not advertising. Advertising revenue is a byproduct and it's a mistake to make it the priority as many sites have done, all the while arguing of course that they haven't.
Parent
Craigslist has a HUGE amount of scams. (Score:5, Informative)
The old Western Union trick:
You're selling an item for $1,000. Someone wanting to buy it sends you $2,000. They say "Oops!" could you send me the balance back to me via Western Union and I'll pick up the item later. You do so. Their original $2,000 check bounces and they have your $1,000. You're out $3,000 and YOU OWE IT, baby!
The scam works many ways but it usually involves you sending a Western Union money gram or some other method where, once you send the money, it's gone. The renting overseas homes works similar to this.
Jobs. Do not give personal information, DOB or SSN, until you've met them and you have verified they are actually an employer.
Some employers, such as governments, insist on a SSN so they run you through Choicepoint, the credit bureaus and other Big Brother corporate entities before they will consider you for employment. I only get those forms when I'm on the interview. I wouldn't give the information to them unless you get an interview.
You need to be very careful on Craigslist.
Re:Craigslist has a HUGE amount of scams. (Score:5, Insightful)
You need to be very careful online.
The problem is that Joe User doesn't understand infosec, and trusts too much. Period.
Parent
Re:Craigslist has a HUGE amount of scams. (Score:5, Informative)
NEVER use Western Union.
NEVER accept cashier's checks as payment.
ALWAYS wait a week after the payment has "cleared" before processing any refunds or "oops I paid too much!".
The trick you describe is more commonly done with cashier's checks. The bank you take it to will say it's valid and give you the money. But all they're really doing is checking to see if it points to a real bank. Once that bank receives it for processing, they look at it and say "what the fuck is this shit you're trying to pull" and demand the money back from your bank.
Your bank then thinks you're a counterfeiter. You face not only the debt of the original check, the loss of the sent back "over paid" money, the loss of the item (if you've sent it), but you also face criminal charges if you can't cough up the original amount in a couple weeks.
Yes the bank knows about the scam.
No, they don't believe you - they think you're in on it.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Last time I made one they took the money out of my account, then handed me the cheque. I no longer had the money, I had a note guaranteed by the bank. I could hand this to someone else and they would get the money from the bank, not from me.
Does anyone know if NZ banks have this issue?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
They are. That doesn't help you much if I give you a forgery.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I thought cashier's cheques were guaranteed by the originating bank? Last time I made one they took the money out of my account, then handed me the cheque. I no longer had the money, I had a note guaranteed by the bank. I could hand this to someone else and they would get the money from the bank, not from me. Does anyone know if NZ banks have this issue?
It's a fallacy with US banking, both cashiers cheques and bankers drafts are as useless as regular cheques for guaranteeing payment. Both can be bounced by the originating bank for a variety of reasons. Cashiers cheque are generally more dangerous as your account can be credited earlier, as required by federal law, than when the clearance occurs so you account can appear in credit but later in debit.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Craigslist has a HUGE amount of scams. (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem that I have with craigslist is that they're refusing to scale their staff and procedures in accordance with their popularity. In some categories, the spam/scam level is as high as 90% so clearly whatever they've been doing for the last few years isn't working. If you're a legitimate user whose IP has been marked on their system as suspicious and try to post an ad, they tell you to jump through a bunch of hoops (including creating an account, verifying the account, etc) that lead absolutely nowhere. They have no technical support and do not respond to emails.
I like the idea of craigslist, but I fear that the site is going to collapse under the weight of its own success unless they start engineering some practical, scalable solutions to the problems of spammers, scammers, as well as legitimate users.
Parent
Missed Connections (Score:3, Funny)
Where else can I tell that short, brunette woman in the purple shirt who barely made eye contact with me in the bookstore that I would like to see her again?
Hooray (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm happy for Craigslist to destroy the newspaper industry (at least in the English speaking world), so long as it takes Rupert Murdoch and his empire with it.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Small and medium sized newspapers are rarely owned by what you perceive as "big media", and are one of the last remaining sources for local news. Don't go wishing for their death too quickly (unless you're just trying to sound cool by hatin' on the media).
Not exactly true (Score:3, Informative)
I think this report is misleading. It should be titled "97 of top 100 pure-play classifieds sites are craigslist".
Hitwise assigns every web site to a single category, like "classifieds" or "news". If your site spans multiple categories, then you have to choose the one that defines you best. Since many traditional classifieds providers are also large news sites, you'll find that there are a lot of major sites that are missing from this list of "classifieds" sites.
I'm not saying that craigslist isn't the powerhouse of online classifieds, but to simply ignore a wide range of classifieds providers because they also provide news is kind of silly.
Newspapers only have themselves to blame (Score:3, Interesting)
Rather than making themselves community sites to attract the eyeballs that would generate revenue, so many online sites treat the internet like a cash register. On-line advertisements should have been as dirt cheap (or free) as Craigslist since printing costs don't warrant what most charge for on-line ads.
Also, so many on-line newspapers haven't figured out how to create a good front page. Check out my home paper's site [kcstar.com]. You're bombarded by so much data and links that you simply can't take in everything you're seeing (thus you ignore most of it).
Newspapers just failed to figure out the internet which is why so many are disappearing.
I never had a bad experience (Score:4, Interesting)
I never had a bad experience buying from Craigslist. At first, I wasn't very sure about sending sellers emails using my personal email, but to this day, I have not had any massive spam increases (gmail filters them out anyway), nor any crazy stalkers bothering me. I've furnished my entire studio with craigslist, for about maybe $400 and that's because I decided to spend a little money. For that I got:
a. a super heavy and sturdy office desk with 3 drawers. It supports 2 21" CRT monitors and computer and receiver. Looks like it could take a lot more too. The seller offered to help me assemble it for free, which I took on his offer but decided to give him $10 extra for it. Total cost: $60.
b. a recliner. I was looking for a recliner to put my feet up. All recliners I saw for new were like lazyboy ugly craps, or some designer stuff that costs about $900 at least. I found an old school leather recliner for $30.
c. a dinner room table with 2 chairs. Fits my space perfectly. Cost $50.
d. a bed side table with 3 drawers. Nice looking dark wood and not some assemble it crap. Cost: $90?
e. two designer lamps. I springed for these and paid I think $200. These were brand new.
I also purchased:
a. 21" sweet CRT monitor for $10.
b. a nice road bike that fits me well for $600. The seller was really cool and gave me a whole bunch of stuff for free and even gave me some technical support after.
c. old clicky keyboard. New would've cost $85 but I got this one for $25. Turned out I couldn't use it and so I returned it. The seller gladly refunded my money.
d. nikon lenses.
I sold some computer memory through it and some other stuff. But generally I buy more than sell.
Some things I wouldn't use craigslist for:
1. personals. They are interesting/voyeuristic to browse, but you never know who is on the other side.
2. cars. too expensive to bring cash. I watched on this tv show this murder happened because the seller knew the buyer was going to bring lots of cash so they arranged to meet at a secluded place and murdered the buyer.
Some tips:
1. You know what they say: if it's too good, it probably is.
2. Don't meet at a deserted place late at night. Meet at a place that you are comfortable with and with lots of people around.
3. Don't give out personal information, ever.
Craigslist is also more useful in larger metropolitan areas. I used to live in a small town and hardly used it. But now I live in a larger city I use it a lot.
Craigslist + RSS is also a major win.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know. But here in NZ, one site alone accounts for apparently 90% of all web site visits.
Also, you said 2.5% of all US traffic. This is not what the article (or summary) said - they said Craigslist accounts for 2.5% of all US web site visits.
Re:2.5% of all US traffic? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:2.5% of all US traffic? (Score:5, Funny)
I don't know. But here in NZ, one site alone accounts for apparently 90% of all web site visits.
www.sheepfantasy.co.nz?
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
newspapers aren't phased by this
Fazed.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fazed
Re:Craigslist... (Score:5, Funny)
You say that like it's a bad thing...
Parent