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by marciovm123 5469 days ago
Airbnb = Craigslist competitor (#25)
2 comments

More like Craigslist spammer.
I'd put Airbnb as a competitor to hostels, they're not really competing with Craigslist directly.
It's easy to look at the problem with Craigslist and think that to challenge it you should build something which does everything that Craigslist does.

AirBNB is a competitor to Craigslist in that it is helping to take it apart piece by piece. Hopefully other YC companies will take on other categories / pieces

They're competing with a specific part of Craigslist, namely short-term accommodations.

Other companies are competing with other parts of Craigslist (e.g. StubHub)

Funny, because they seem to get quite a few referrals from craigslist.
Wikipedia gets quite a few referrals from Google. Are they direct competitors?
That depends on your view of Knol.