apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

argh.
my daily browsing has come to a severe stop.
lame. lame. oh so lame.

so sad.

I emailed Ryan directly and he said that Craigslist had slapped him with a "Cease and Desist" order.

Please, everyone - email cragislist directly and ask them to reconsider. Public pressure does make a difference.

jim@craigslist.org
craig@craigslist.org

Also submit this any any newspaper you can think of. I submitted it to news.com and slashdot since those are very widely read. Other submissions from other people would help show interest.

Oh god, there's no way I'm clicking on every link. Listpic was invaluable. Unless craigslist is planning on implementing their own form of the listpic, this is a horrible decision.

BASTARDS - I love litpic, now I'm lost without it.

The official word from Craigslist is "disproportionate server load and multiple TOS violations". In my opinion it just came down to Listpic making money (google ads) off of Craigslist pictures. Why they can't just Charge Listpic for the bandwidth use and move on is beyond me. Actually it's not. The people that run Craigslist are more like "religious zealots" than "normal" people:

http://www.webware.com/8301-1_109-9707565-2.html

Am I the only person that didn't know about Listpic? ...all this time I've been clicking my way through Craigslist. What was I thinking?!

That was just a really foolish move. This site is good advertising FOR Craigslist. Lots of people (like me) did not know about Craigslist until coming to this site. It also goes a long way toward reminding people about using Craigslist. If someone is looking for something special, this demographic cues into this website to look for it. The Listpic also pulls people to think of WHERE to buy in addition to the clever space ideas etc... I assume that is why the other advertisers (who pay to be on this site) find the price worth it. Craigslist is likely to lose business from this demographic with free daily PROMINENT exposure and reinforcement of the values they can offer. Someone at Craigslist is very, very foolish.

Oh. I forgot to add that I am three hours South of Chicago between the new markets they are trying to start in Champaign and Terre Haute. Very, very foolish.

aaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrgggggggghhhhhh...i can only hope that craigslist will make some sort of deal to implement the code that makes listpic possible on their own site (after paying a nice sum to Ryan for his trouble creating something so cool, of course).

You all made good points.

Tell them to the guys at Craigslist directly.

jim@craigslist.org

craig@craigslist.org

mviamontes - I didn't know about it either. DC craigslist is pretty lame IMHO, so I don't visit that often, unless I'm selling something (but my stuff's not lame ;D). I can't even check listpic out because there's nothing there now.

Boomer:
At this point I can guarantee than everyone from Craigslist is watching this site to ensure there are no "violations" and wll follow these threads as well. They will be trying to gauge how much overlap and how much business they will be losing. I do not think they have anyway other than this site to measure that as their own lists are so much larger at this time. However, the bounce I just saw on the NY AP classifieds was interesting. They are forcing a competition where they did not need to do so. very, very foolish.
PS.Thanks again for the advise. I really do appreciate it.

Wow, this sux since i'll effectively cease and desist my use of Craigslist without the ease of looking that Listpic provided.

Please don't stop using Craigslist. It's still free, and some people trying to make extra income on very thin margins simply cant afford other forms of advertising (me for example).

Here is an update from Ryan Sit, posted on Listpic a few minutes ago:

Here is my side of the story as requested by many users:
1) Craig posted this: http://forums.sandiego.craigslist.org/?act=Q&ID=65313211
2) I responded with this: http://forums.sandiego.craigslist.org/?act=Q&ID=65326082
3) Here is the original email from Craigslist: http://forums.sandiego.craigslist.org/?act=Q&ID=65326125
4) Then Craigslist removed/censored the thread and postings from the forum and changed the message to: http://forums.sandiego.craigslist.org/?act=Q&ID=65331406
5) I've tried contacting them, but so far I have not been able to reach them.
Thank you,
Ryan

Some of the media has started reporting on this but only in little ways so far, and taking sides with Craigslist :

http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9727521-7.html

http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/06/craigslist_bloc.html

So, I guess I don't get it...How is ListPic infringing upon Craig's money making? Seems like Ryan's product makes Craigslist more user-friendly so that more commerce can happen. Seems if Craig weren't so short-sighted, he'd hire Ryan for a lot of money to work together for the good of both. But sometimes cutting off your nose to spite your face is fun.

Boomer,

I just read both media pieces you supplied and I found the first one to be unbiased and the second one clearly states they thought ListPic was a great complement to Craigslist.

As far as taking sides with Craigslist, I thought the coverage was amazingly kind to ListPic considering that it is an acknowledged hack, therefore without a doubt, illegal.

Lisa - I hear you.

I had a response today from Craig Newmark, to an email I sent making some suggestions as to how they could work out their differences (such as fees or just plain hiring Ryan, the Listpic guy, or impleneting their own visual interface under license to Listpic). He (Craig) was pretty up front and suggested they were "considering it" although he didn't give specifics.

I emailed Ryan again and suggested some things, like since he's made a lot of money from advertising already to just drop the ads and work something out since that seems to be the hot button.

So now the Listpic site has a new message. Maybe there's hope :

" Check back later, there might be something new.

Thank you,
Ryan"

Lisa - Let's be clear on one thing though. Nothing Listpic did was "illegal". Any legal action to come out of this would be purely a civil matter, not a criminal one.

Listpic is back but no longer getting ads from Craigslist - which makes it kind of useless. Oh well. Guess we have to hoipe for Craigslist to get with the program and update their obsolete 1980's interface.

I am very sad that Craigslist has blocked Listpic. I really hope they work something out to bring it back (using Craigslist, not that other lame site with hardly any ads).

This no doubt craigslist offers the best localized classifieds on the net - however the interface is a little dated compared to the emerging web 2.0 interfaces.

As a pet project I have taken up the challenge of implemented Craigslist on how I would want it - leveraging excepted usability methodologies and stardard technogies.

I have also attempted to comply to Craigslist posted terms of use.

the project my be found using the following url:

www.mycraigslist.com

well just my 2 cents...
irieb

ps:
the site may seem a little slow somtime; only because it is hosted on a small server with limited bandwidth

ListPic is a very cool mashup. It is an inspiration to many of the free craigslist tool I created.

You can check them out at http://www.craigslistcompanion.com

I have got a visual craigslist browser, visual craigslist multiple city search, a craigslist hitcounter and a firefox extension which I name CLPicView.

CLPicView also works with http://www.craigslist-search.com to bring multi craigslist city search with picture previews.

@mviamontes -- Me, too! I am dismayed when I total up all the time I've spent clicking through pic links. I hope the poster who suggested that perhaps Craigslist is planning to implement a similar function themselves is right.