Craigslist and the Bad Neighbor Policy
Wednesday, December 2, 2009 at 15:42
Yesterday evening I picked up an article called Craigslist Don't Be Evil, I can't remember whether it was something I saw on Twitter or why I was reading my feeds. I think it was through Twitter, but either way the title caught my eye. The article was written by Romy Maxwell, who is in the process of creating a Web site called Flippity. My understanding of the site is that it would locate Craigslist listing on a map. They were using Yahoo Pipes to aggregate the data base. They had contacted Craigslist and told them what they were doing, to make sure it was ok. At first there appeared to be no problem since the site was noncommercial, however after several emails past back and forth, Craigslist went silent. The next thing that happen was the Yahoo Pipes that Flippity was using stopped working. They were simply being directed back to the home page, Craigslist had blocked the Yahoo Pipes. Fortunately, the creators of Flippity have other options, however it is too bad they had to use them.
My problem with Craiglist, is not that they blocked Yahoo Pipes, they have every right to block whom ever they want. According to the rumors, Yahoo pipes were blocked because they are very aggressive at hitting sites. However, this reason may or may not be true since Craiglist never said why they were blocking Yahoo Pipes. This is the first problem I see with Craigslist's action. The second problem that I see based on this article is that they made it appear that everything was ok. There was no fore warning that there was a problem and that they would have to block Yahoo Pipes. Luckily for Flippity they are still in development and have other options, however this does not make what Craiglist did right. It seems to me that the proper way for Craiglist to handle this would be to notify Flipity, that there was a problem with using Yahoo Pipes, what the problem was and that until that problem was resolve they would have to block Yahoo Pipes. After all Flippity had specifically contacted Craiglist to make sure using Yahoo Pipes was ok, the least Craiglist could have done was to contact them when it wasn't. It is sad that companies like Craiglist seem perfectly willing to make arbitrary decisions that effect others without any notification.
Kim |
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Craigslist,
Yahoo Pipes in
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