Craigslist in a Pickle – Jobster Caught in Crossfire

   

Last week, the Big Cheese broke the story that the wheels have fallen off the relationship between Craigslist and Jobster.

   

Jason Goldberg, president of Jobster, responded:  “We were actively working with Craigslist business and technical contacts at all level of their organization prior to our initial product launch.  In fact, the day before we went live to our customers, Craigslist confirmed by e-mail that we were fine and all systems go. They then changed their mind post launch. We are not sure why the change of heart. The best response we have from them is that they have decided not to support any 3rd party posts.”

   

After my recent beating on Craigslist for duplicates, cross-site postings, and bogus ‘jobs’, it’s no surprise that CL isn’t interested in making it easier for a few employers to abuse the system.  Jobster would have been a good partner; but it’s easy to envision a flood of 3^rd party sites catering to unscrupulous posters.

   

The real problem here is Craigslist’s bizarre business model – part commercial, part philanthropic, part community service, and part walled garden – that does not reflect the world in which we, or they, live.

   

§         To keep things local, CL creates sites in larger cities and attempts to prevent cross posting – even though we live in a connected, highly mobile world;

   

§         To pay the bills, CL charges for job ads in a few cities, but mostly they give away this service – even though they know that ‘free classifieds’ result in abuse; and,

   

§         To create online communities, CL allows all kinds of content – even though most of the content, and users, generate high traffic volume but no revenue.

   

Joel’s take is that “Craigslist’s decision not to support Jobster’s direct post feature is unfortunate as it flies smack in the face of delivering the best user experience. Craigslist would prefer that each employer post their jobs to craigslist manually one at a time vs. having a service like Jobster help them manage multiple postings.”

   

While true, CL views employers as secondary customers.  CL’s primary customers are the individuals within each CL community; so decisions are made in an effort to improve the quality of the user experience for individuals, not employers.

   

So if you’re a 3^rd-party, focused on helping employers … any relationship you attempt with CL is doomed. 

   

Perhaps someday Craigslist will tire of the pickle created by their current business model. If that day comes, the current free-riders abusing their system will squeal; but the majority of us will benefit from higher quality content and an improved user experience. 

   

Comments

[Colin Kingsbury]

I wonder if this has more to do with Jobster's vertical scraping than cross-posting, though I agree that it all seems a bit mercurial. If anything, the bar to entry to being a Jobster client is quite high versus posting directly to CL, and would IMHO suggest that Jobster's presence would have the net effect of increasing the utility of CL for its users.

As for the larger idea--the real value of Craigslist is that it is sort of like a Slow Lane for the Internet. Because it was adopted first by web-savvy people it is mistakenly held up as a place for the digerati, but its real mission (I think) is to provide something accessible to all of society, including those people who have basically no money, and by definition, are of little or no interest to most businesses.

[Bob Wilson]

Hi Colin,

Thanks for posting feedback.

“… a Slow Lane for the Internet” … I like it.

Periodically CL has had a problem with vertical scraping/indexing, and they’ve blocked sites in the past for placing too much load on their servers. As you say, they are mercurial.

My reference to cross-posting referred to CL’s requirement that if an employer wants to recruit in ten markets, the employer must place the job ad ten times on ten local sites. This is really lame … the ads are free (or low cost), but the employer’s time isn’t. And why should CL users who are willing to work in either the Bay Area or Sacramento search two distinct sites?

I agree completely that Jobster’s clients would be good for CL, and the jobs coming from Jobster employers would be of interest to CL’s users.

Best wishes,
Bob :-)