It's not "their" data. It's their user's data. As a user and a homeowner I post my rental listing to Craigslist because that's where the most prospective renters are.
In the past, do you think anybody ever looked at the classifieds page in a newspaper and thought "this data is owned by the Times"?
In the PadMapper case, who are the losers? Renters benefit from a radically different UI and de-cluttering of daily reposts. Owners benefit from the increased traffic to their listing. Craigslist benefits because it's more of a 1-stop-shop for owners: post to craigslist (and pay them), and get some level of syndication to different services and apps. They also aren't losing out from reduced mindshare of renters: when you use PadMapper you know you're using Craigslist. It's always obvious and all links point there.
I've posted a couple things to Craigslist. Maybe it's different for rental listings, but for what I've posted, Craigslist did not demand exclusivity. If I wanted to post my listing to some other service, I was free to do that.
Similarly, regardless of what Craigslist's policies are with regards to third party access: it's still your data, right? You are free to post it to an open classifieds service?
That being the case, from where do you derive this idea that Craiglist has somehow taken custody of your data, and thus owes the rest of the industry some measure of access to it? Why is that Craigslist's job? If you want there to be multiple competing listing services, push your data to multiple services.
It might be your data, but that doesn't somehow make it Craigslist responsibility to share it with other applications. If you want your data listed in as many places as possible, register with each and every system, and enter it.
In the past, do you think when you submitted a classified to 1 newspaper, they called up all the other local and regional papers to submit your information too?
Why on earth would another newspaper print an ad or a classified that they're not being paid for?
Also, do you have any examples of this hypothetical happening and newspaper A not having a problem with it? Outside of tabloid culture, ye olde newspapers had much more in the way of principles, and using another's content without permission was reprehensible.
> Why on earth would another newspaper print an ad or a classified that they're not being paid for?
It's kind of funny, isn't it? On the one hand we have the newspapers, who are being slowly killed off by the internet, and on the other hand we have internet startups like Padmapper who are doing things that are absolutely and plainly stupid when you imagine them being done by newspapers rather than web startups.
Here we have one company that allows free classified ads for almost everything, everywhere (Craigslist) on the one hand, and another company that scrapes free classified ads for rental housing and accepts no payment from anyone (Padmapper). Very strange.
FWIW, to me, Padmapper drives traffic to Craigslist rather than competing with it. Whether that traffic is valuable to Craigslist or not I can't say.
Actually, this is really interesting. If a free newspaper did start repulishing ads and the primary paper cut them off, the ad posters would be up in arms because their audience is now reduced.
Its a loose loose scenario, much better to allow the reproductuon for everyone.
What if newspaper B held positions the advertiser didn't want to be identified with? Or had readers the advertiser didn't want to do business with? Or presented their ads in a way that they didn't want? I don't think you can assume the advertiser cares only about the widest audience.
Don't forget that screen-scraping doesn't work in print journalism - transferring the ads is labour-intensive.
But even if the labour was free and paper B was willing to print ads/classifieds for no money, it's still a drain on paper A's resources - running a classifieds department required staff taking calls for placed ads, plus editorial work and similar. If paper B takes those ads and sells them at a lower price, then paper A will lose out on revenue for value created by their staff.
What Craigslist has is what economists call "positive network externalities" or network effects. Which just means that it's a really valuable service because tons of other people use it. Buyers go there because lots of people are selling, and lots of people selling go there because they know lots of buyers visit the site.
This is the perennial frustration with the immense power of the network effect, a power that all start-ups live and die on.
Unfortunately, us humans have a hard time banding together and forming enough consensus to 'jump ship' enmass to a new service. Especially, when the a lack of 'innovative features' on a given service barely registers on the pain scale.
Look at the internets SOPA protest, the entire integrity of the internet was threatened and we did something about it. But how can you generate enough support around: we need better mash-ups to view craigslist postings!
So, what are we supposed to do? Seems like the only options are:
A) destroy the network effect with legislation. (How is this good?)
B) select another company The Board feels has a better platform, crush CL with legislation, and establish the new company with legislation. (How is this good!?!)
Why the references to legislation? The free market can fix this IF the Craigslist experience really is bad. You might not be able to grow organically like Craigslist did but it is totally possible. Pay listers to post on your site. Offer something unique to the listers Craigslist can't.
I presume that is what we are talking about, when people here complain that nobody has been able to defeat Craigslist and that Craigslist ought to die (in so many words).
No legislation! We aren't supposed to do anything other than decide which services to freely use and not. Our collective actions make the market dynamic, and if some company is winning and you don't like it, don't resort to violence (legislation).
We need legislation to stop people from abusing legislation. Err.
The solution suggested in "Crossing the Chasm" is not a frontal assault, but to completely dominate a niche. A frontal assault is impossible, and no one ever succeeds. Microsoft did something that IBM didn't care too much about initially. Google started out doing something that was tangential for Microsoft. Facebook did not go head to head with ads and search with Google initially either.
In the past, do you think anybody ever looked at the classifieds page in a newspaper and thought "this data is owned by the Times"?
In the PadMapper case, who are the losers? Renters benefit from a radically different UI and de-cluttering of daily reposts. Owners benefit from the increased traffic to their listing. Craigslist benefits because it's more of a 1-stop-shop for owners: post to craigslist (and pay them), and get some level of syndication to different services and apps. They also aren't losing out from reduced mindshare of renters: when you use PadMapper you know you're using Craigslist. It's always obvious and all links point there.