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by goblin89 5313 days ago
I don't think Craigslist is ugly. Not from the point of design, which is not about looks actually. From the point of cosmetic styling—maybe it is.
1 comments

Right, same here. But the average person doesn't know how to make a distinction between "this is easy to use and very consistent" and "this is boring and ugly". To most, if it's dull and plain they say it's ugly. I regret mentioning Craigslist noe because we're missing the point. I see now that Criagslist is a special case. It's famous, infamous, and just massively popular. It came out at a time when Yahoo was just as ugly but was still heavily trafficked and people were used to similar designs. If Craigslist were a new player in town then it may not be able to expand beyond San Feansisco. People would visit and immediately be turned off because they're used to all the trappings of Yelp, Thumbtack.com and others. Being cute enough to get attention at first glance goes much farther than I think we realize and if Craigslist were the new guy it wouldn't grab attention at first glance looking how it does.