Last week, Craigslist reprimanded Internet company Oodle, a vertical search engine for online classifieds, for using its ads on a web site and only linking from the ads to Craigslist. This process is called "scraping." Of course, with this call Craig upset Oodle, especially because he still lets other sites use his material in a similar way. But for how long? Is Craig, after all, not a selfless Web hippie, but just a hippiecrite?
Despite, or maybe because of, its growing success, Craigslist seems to refuse being used commercially. Professor John Lavine from Northwestern University said that in only three markets Craigslist charged for ads. He added that the mysterious Craig was a normal, nice, somewhat geeky guy. Well, did you really expect anything else? But Craig's recent, somewhat mysterious, actions against Oodle may point in another direction.
Craigslist's appeal and Web cred lie in its simplicity. The site seems cheap and not to be looking for great profits. From the company structure and the cheap site, it becomes very obvious that Craigslist certainly doesn't have the best revenue model. It's clever, but under its current conditions it could never create gigantic profits because it is not designed that way.
During my research I looked at Google AdSense for the first time. Now that seems more promising. I mean, how can you go wrong when you combine online advertising with the best search engine out there? It's almost scary how intelligent a silly-named Internet tool can be. And according to Brian, AdSense works damn well.
And then I found out about Housingmaps, a blend of GoogleMaps and Craigslist. With one click on a map users can find houses, apartments and rooms in their preferred areas. Housingmaps still lacks elaborateness, but once it really gets going, I am not sure what all it will be able to do. Maybe we will be able to not only find a place, but look at its inside, our potential neighbors, crime stats in the area and the likelihood of good dates in the area. Exciting, isn't it?
I don't think the question should be who has the best revenue model. AdSense and Craigslist, as well as Housingmaps or Oodle, function very differently and follow different missions. While I hope that Craig remains the cyberspace philanthropist, Google just seems to be once again so far ahead of the curve that I won't try to speculate what their next genius, huge-revenue creating, idea will be.
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