Craigslist isn't playing the game and doing fine. The game is all in your head. Feels like even the IDEA that there's a game is MBA hogwash they're trying to sell you.
Craigslist is a benevolent dictator, but it is no saint.
Craigslist is greedy in a strange way. Craigslist is greedy over their the simplicity of their product and desire to hold on to their turf.
The company makes more than enough money to offer all kinds of improvements that need not markedly change how the marketplace behaves.
These features would not exploit the user or the user's experience. (In the spirit of this thread, "MBA" ideas)
When someone comes along and tries to ship the same thing, improved, and break TOS to get exposure to CL users, CL shuts them down. The big difference between craigslist and other startups is craigslist rarely incorporates competitive ideas into their product.
I support the position craigslist holds, but not the way craigslist holds it. I believe it will be toppled by a group less benevolent or be forced to add features at a date far later than it could have added utility to so many people's lives.
> When someone comes along and tries to ship the same thing, improved, and break TOS to get exposure to CL users
Well, that's an incredibly euphemistic take on it, if nothing else. Let's see someone try to "get exposure to" (scrape) Facebook's user graph for a competing product and see how long that attempt would last. I don't understand how people can feel entitled to data that CL gathers: obviously they'd be protective of it as it's their secret sauce/crown jewels.