Ask HN: How would you beat Craigslist?

[memtap]

In terms of traffic, Craigslist is the overwhelming leader in online classifieds. With over 60 million uniques a month, it vastly outsizes competitors Oodle (~4.9 million), Backpages(~3.8 million) and others. Granted, this does not take competitors dedicated to one vertical(i.e. Monster.com for Jobs; Match.com for Personals) into account.

My question to you HN, is how would you compete with Craigslist to build a complete classifieds site? - Jobs, For Sale, Personals, Housing, Services

How would you penetrate their first mover advantage and extreme market share?

[ig1]

The list of services you give are somewhat ironic.

It's easy to forget that once upon a time Craigslist was the dominant player in jobs, dating, housing, etc. but now all of those sectors are dominated by niche players.

Craigslist is dying a death of a thousand cuts, niche companies have gone after and in almost all cases taken the most profitable areas away from craigslist leaving it with the low-margin dregs.

Craigslist originated in a time when web discovery was hard, with the rise of sites like Google the discovery problem was solved and the advantage of Craigslist severely reduced.

If you want to take on a particular vertical from Craigslist you can probably figure out a way to do that vertical better, but if you try to build a generic service you're building a solution to a problem that no-longer exists.

[christphrdunder]

There's plenty you could do to make a better Craigslist, simply because they're so slow to roll out any new features. As a result, there's a large number of websites and mobile apps built to augment the basic functionality of vanilla Craigslist.

But I highly doubt you could have any success grabbing market share, because none of these functional shortcomings are enough of a problem to the Average User that they'd be interested in using a service with no reputation. Not to mention the network effect.

[memtap]

Definitely agree that Craigslist could be a better site; but what about a better business? It seems that most of the sites that have taken on Craigslist have offered technical improvements; I.e. mobile apps and social integration.

What about non-technical innovation? What about an aggressive, real world sales force that solicits businesses?

[polyfractal]

Sales forces are very expensive. Case in point: Groupon has a lot of revenue, but still does not turn a profit. That's because Groupon needs a giant sales force to hunt down the deals.

CL is making a lot of money precisely because they are relatively lightweight.

[loupgaroublond]

You're asking the wrong question. If someone could do it, they would have. Ask yourself why hasn't Craigslist been cracked. What does Craigslist not serve and how can you step through, via iterations, a product that's disruptive to how classifieds are done today.

[mapster]

You would need a significant technological breakthrough - so you would be 1st mover of this, and apply it to a new breed of classifieds. Maybe AI or something.

[xsmasher]

Maps; I'd like to see a map of all apartments or tag sales in a specific area, or a map of all the items I've selected.

[memtap]

Agreed, PadMapper.con does a really good job of this.

[notatoad]

I wouldn't. The online classifieds market does not have any room for new entrants.

[memtap]

There's always room for new entrants. What about Google overtaking Yahoo and Facebook overtaking MySpace? In hindsight it's easy to point out flaws, but at the time, each of the respective sites were their markets leader.

[notatoad]

there's a difference between a market leader and the market leader customers are satisfied with. myspace was shit and everybody knew it. there was plenty of room for a new entrant. same thing with yahoo. even with google, there is still potentially room for new entrants in the search market because search is such a complex problem and there are many ways of approaching it.

classifieds, however, is a very simple market, and craigslist does an exceptional job of serving that market. you can't beat them on price or reach, and there are no other important features. the only hope of success in selling classifieds is to launch into geographical areas or languages they don't serve. it's also a fairly low-margin market, and the primary customers are cheapskates.

why would you attempt to enter a market like that when there are underserved, lucrative markets to be exploited?