PadMapper Gets C&D From Craigslist Over Apartment Listing Maps

First time accepted submitter Autumnmist writes "Craigslist has sent a Cease and Desist to PadMapper, a site that does a mashup of Craigslist (as well as Rent.com, Apartments.com) apartment listings and Google Maps. Craigslist is great, but apartment hunting through Craigslist has always been a needle in a haystack proposition, because all apartments for an entire city area are shown in a giant list. PadMapper made Craigslist better by locating each listing on a Google Map of the area. From PadMapper: 'I recently received a Cease and Desist letter from Craigslist, and wasn't able to get a meeting or convince Craigslist's lawyer that PadMapper was beneficial to Craigslist and apartment hunters in general. They allow mobile apps to display their listings if you buy a license from them, but not websites."

Why only PadMapper?

[t4ng*]

HousingMaps.com [housingmaps.com] has been doing this for something like 5 years. I'm sure there are probably others like it too.

Why bother?

[SlowTurtle]

Not only is this a major bummer for me, as I love using PadMapper, I don't see why craigslist would do this. Not only did it make craigslist apartment listings actually usable, but it must be driving a fair amount of traffic to them as well. Perhaps if craigslist was about to launch something similar I could understand, but I think we all know that is not going to happen.

Re:It like the 80's never ended in San Fran

[Ossifer]

Yeah, why don't they have seven different competing nav bars and three layers of epilepsy-triggering flash ads?

The plain text UI is *exactly* why CL is popular.

Just because you can doesnt' mean you should.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is craigslist still stuck in the 80's with their user interface?

Who says ?

Just because everyone else has to use every single latest scripting language, technique, eye-candy, whatever doesn't mean it is actually useful.

I can't tell you how many times I've tried clinking on a navigation link only to have some whiz-bangy thingy pop-up and block my mouse click - yeah no matter how you maneuvered your mouse, it triggered the pop-up and you were somewhere you didn't want to be.

It's the typical thing that developers fall into time and time again: there's a language or platform feature and they need to use it somehow regardless of its necessity - just because it's a "Cool" thing to do.

Re:Wait

[espiesp]

Sounds like you're one of the idiots who posts an ad on craigslist and omits all of the information possible. It's not a newspaper ad limited to 20 words. You can actually tell me a little something about the car you're trying to sell.

"Van for Sale" does not a good ad make.

Tell me what works, what doesn't, what year it is, what brand it is, what model it is, how good the tires are, yes, whether it runs or not, how many miles. Don't omit pertinent facts and I won't have to email you to ask stupid questions. And yes, even if this is a $1000 beater. Take the 30 seconds to write a meaningful ad and take decent pictures and your stuff will sell in a reasonable amount of time with minimal hassle. Also use big words that confuse rednecks.

Craigslist wants to remain stuck in the past

[JDG1980]

It's unfortunate that Craigslist is the most popular wanted-ads site on the Internet, since they insist on remaining stuck in the past, and making it as hard as possible for people to access their content.

Their obsession with "localism" and consistent refusal to implement an all-aread search feature (and consistent breaking of third-party sites which do this) is especially problematic. I collect electric fans from the 1980s, which often don't show up on eBay because people don't think they are worth anything, but commonly appear on Craigslist. An all-areas search would be extremely helpful, but every time one appears, Craigslist either threatens them or does something on their site to break it. If someone doesn't want to ship (I usually offer them extra money in addition to the actual shipping costs if they are willing to do so), that's fine, but it should be their choice, not Craigslist's.

Re:CraigsList is awesome, even if you don't get it

[drinkypoo]

I'm always amused when I see people, mostly web professionals, bitch about CraigsList.

No, users bitch about Craigslist, because their site lacks distance search, and users want it. And yes, I know this is deliberate, and no, I don't agree that it makes sense. And therefore, if they won't permit scraping, they're assholes and I wish they would go the fuck away so that someone who will do a more functional site has a chance to get enough users to make it worthwhile.