There was a discussion in the "Craigslist Crusher" thread a few days ago that basically pointed out that because Craigslist's main advantage over everyone else is its user base, and not its pretty site or awesome features, it would be foolish for them to offer an API, in which others could mooch off the user base. I tend to agree: From a business standpoint, a Craigslist API has more cons than pros.
"You are missing a HUGE opportunity to extend and control your brand."
Why? The article doesn't touch on this. Craigslist is already an extremely successful business. It's not a small startup looking to gain traction. An API has pros and cons, and Craigslist has a lot to lose. I would expect the author to show how the pros could outweigh the cons.
There are no pros for craigslist having an API. This is a for-profit company that has chosen not to be greedy bastards. If they wanted they could have an advertisement on every single page of the site but they don't. Craigslist is cost free to almost all users, is fast, and has little down time.
Here are some of the reasons why offering an API is not a good fit for them.
* Craigslist does not need users driven to it which is a side effect of having an API. They are already large and in charge.
* Unless they charge for the API it is a waste of CPU cycles and eventually technical support from an actual person to support this. It is a cost sink.
* Craigslist does not sell anything directly like ebay or amazon. Ebay and Amazon have apis to drive traffic to them. Then a user sells something on the service and ebay/amazon get a cut, that is how their services work, not craigslist.
* "if people care so much about craigslist features, then just build something and offer them the code for free." This was a comment from another user and it makes a great point. Like the engineer who stayed on at Apple to finish his project, something like that could happen to make craigslist better. Has anyone bothered to try and lets see the code?
* craigslist has not shown any intention to move into other markets besides online ads. A publicly facing API would allow others to develop new services and allow craigslist to buy them. This has not happened.
* No major corporation came along and helped craigslist why should they help you? In fact craigslist fought against entrenched newspapers across the globe to create their user base. To sum this point up "There is no such thing as a Free lunch".
I am sure I am forgetting a few other good reasons why they are not offering an API. To me it comes down to a bunch of people bitching about how they built a service on top of data they did not own or control and when it was taken away they act shocked. To me that is just plain business idiocy. If you start a business one of the first things you do is secure your supply chain, in this case the apartment listing data.
Amen brother. Too many young people these days who have contributed nothing to the building of these major sites think they are entitled to access to them (however they like) and they then cry and moan about it when they do not get what they want, when they want it and how they want it.
I'm sure this will be voted down, but every bit of it is true.
An API seems like the antithesis of Craigslist. Craigslist is the online classifieds equivalent of the long form sales letter. To contemporary designers/developers, the design is hideous, the usability sucks, and if you asked for an off-the-cuff evaluation, most would tell you they (long form sales letters) won't work. Yet, they do.
Craigslist is similar. The site is sparsely designed, but makes no attempt at exploiting a minimalist aesthetic that we're used to seeing other places. The site continues to use bare bones formatting and lacks features that everyone expects. Forget an API, where are the like/tweet/share/etc buttons?
I think Craigslist's anti-feature pattner works for them. Posting your first listing to the site has some confusing points, but once you've made your way through the process once, friction is incredibly low. Craigslist is the ultimate in low effort online posting. I'm not sure an API would fit with this product philosophy.
I don't see why the fuss about Craigslist not providing an API:
1. Anyone is free to come up with a better provide that serves Craigslist users' needs, you can argue that craigslist is the dominant player and it's hard to steal users from them, but many niche-focus startups have proved otherwise (or they simply don't have a compelling enough products);
2. When it comes to the time Craigslist fails its users functionally and aesthetically, it's hard to imagine no other players will surge up in the game;
3. Even if Craigslist provides an API now but doesn't improve its user experience, do we just want it to serve as a database for all other services that piggyback on Craigslist?
So my message to Craigslist: "Just think hard about how to serve your users better. You're not an asshole for restricting data access to your site, but it is irresponsible to waste other engineers lives on trying to defeat you while you can easily make yourselves better for your users!"
Why would they? I would be afraid of some service taking away parts of my offerings. I have no idea how the API would still direct to craigslist but imagine:
E.g. service A puts up a nice website for nicheB using the API. ServiceA gets super successful and becomes the #1 go-to site for nicheB. ServiceA lives on without the API. Craigslist lost nicheB.
It's users? What do the users care if there is an API? An API just gives hackers the upper hand in finding the gold in the listings. What Craigslist doesn't care about are developers who want to scrape their data. That's a tiny subset and not representative of their users.
There are probably conditions on the use of the feeds. I notice that on a lot of the big sports websites they bring you to a page showing conditions of use before they will let you see the RSS feeds. Could be the same thing here.
Yes you are not bound by the conditions but the contents could be assumed to be copyright protected.
Unless you are sure that copyright doesn't apply (or is owned by the advertisers rather than craigslist) I don't think that you could assume you had a right to distribute the information.
EDIT: Note that I'm talking about using the RSS feed by some significant transformation rather than presenting fairly directly as written for which there may be a implied license by issuing in a syndication format. Even just embedding in a webpage I would be careful about personally.
Perhaps reading the RSS feed doesn't give them permission to reuse and republish the feeds information. PadMapper didn't seem to have trouble getting the data, the problem was that CraigsList filed a cease & desist.
