August 07, 2007

Will CraigsList ever slow down? More map mashups will be a great plus for this resource

I can't get over the amazing capabilities of CraigsList... I've been a fan and a user for a long time now (I found my Ft Collins short term rental using it) and lately I've unloaded loads of stuff using this incredible local search / classifieds utililty. Obviousy the "local" component and the immediateness (is that a word??) make CraigsList a very powerful resource. To compare... I had a car advertised in a local paper and received virtually no response to the ad.. what a waste of $50! Contrasting that is the flurry of activiry I received from a CraigsList posting. Being able to target ads to locations that are more relevant (eg. sometimes I advertise on the Boulder or Denver list, depending on the item) which brings amazing reasults when used appropriately. Ideally I'd like to see more mapping in the UI, however, to date it doesn't seem to limit the usefullness... more mobile integration would also be very cool.. ie. post from a mobile or contact me via my mobile etc... although there are simple ways to get around this or provide a hack. The map mashups of CraigsList housing adverts have been huge to say the least - see http://www.housingmaps.com/ or http://www.myapartmentmap.com/ but I'd like to see more or even map driven mashups that incorporate all the CraigsList listings. Do you know of such a mashup? Anyone getting these kind of results fromm Google Base? I found an amazing Apple iPhone map mashup that enables users to locate ebay listsings for Apple iPhones.. way cool. I envision this being much more useful by being able to mash ebay and craigslist into the map and change the search parameter to include any kind of product... imagine... search craigslist for computers neara zipcode 80528... that's what I want to see! Gotta go.. I have a guy coming over to buy a desk that's been sitting in my garage... kaching $$

2 comments:

Unknown said...

have you seen allurstuff instead?

http://allurstuff.com/

it's also a classifieds site, but with more emphasis on searching, and with a pretty slick google maps integration. (i think it’s the best out there so far) plus is also does craigslist maskups, but for any search, real-time.

I think , therefore i may be said...

Hi Folks

we at http://www.findnearyou.com are also trying something similar. Check out and give ur comments.