DISQUS

Mathew's comments: Craigslist: blocking a leech, or a feature?

  • Stu · 2 years ago
    So...where's the blogosphere outrage like we saw directed against Amazon/Alexa when they cut off the leechers at Alexaholic?
  • Alex Beamish · 2 years ago
    Probably a better way to implement this add-on (in hindsight) would have been to demo the system to the higher-ups at craigslist and find out how they could work together, rather than setting up a service that causes an increase in the server traffic by a factor of 20.

    Alternatively, if Listpic had implemented a solution that only loaded the servers an additional 10%, but had added significant value, craigslist might have been much more open to the idea, and possibly even an acquisition.

    It sounds like the craiglist community liked the idea -- and since that's what is driving the site (mostly), it seems likely something like listpic will happen.
  • Ed Kohler · 2 years ago
    Unaware of the bandwidth issues? That seems rather disingenuous. Someone capable of writing such an app would have a good feel for how much bandwidth is involved in serving all those images.