[a5seo]

In defense of CL (which I have never before offered), I noticed some UI improvements recently: pic view, grid view, and map view.

These are the first noticeable innovations on CL in many years. Might they be the result of the on-going parade of sites improving upon CL w/ their own data, not to mention the criticisms on HN and elsewhere?

Whether they 'hate' competition is debatable. Clearly they view their data as THEIR property. They occasionally let things like PadMapper go while putting the ban hammer down on other things, very arbitrarily.

The Wired story on them about 5-6 years back suggested they are just very skeptical of third parties and human nature in general. It left me with the impression that Craig is just deeply selfish and authoritarian.

[wlindner]

I've seen the UI improvements, but haven't needed to use them so I don't know how good they are. If those work: Awesome! In a way, that's a victory. If CL incorporates the best things about 3rd party sites into their own site, I think that's a big win for consumers. If CL refuses to allow 3rd parties to exist because they are skeptical of human nature. Talk about the ultimate irony: a site that lives off of people's willingness to trust strangers being unwilling to trust strangers themselves.

[a5seo]

Good point. Here's the quote from the end of the article:

"These all signal Newmark and Buckmaster's wariness about what humans, including themselves, might do if given the chance. There may be a peace sign on every page, but the implicit political philosophy of craigslist has a deeply conservative, even a tragic cast. Every day the choristers of the social web chirp their advice about openness and trust; craigslist follows none of it, and every day it grows."

HN discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=784663

[gamblor956]

CraigsList doesn't care if other websites use the same data to power their own services, as long as those other websites obtain the data directly from the source (i.e., the user) and not by scraping Craiglist.