Thanks for knocking something off my to-do list. However, what I really wanted (and I wrote an ugly version for myself) is an update for apartments. We were looking for 1-2 beds that allowed dogs/cats within a certain prices range, not in certain neighborhoods. Add that feature and you have an awesome product.
or are you doing the smart thing and just sending people a single email "We've found a new match" with a link to the craigslist search results, sorted for their search preferences?
It's hard to remember that everyone doesn't have 7+ Gb of email storage. If I wanted to use a service like this, I can't imagine an email with the fulltext of a listing being big enough to ever bother me.
Giving your users the option to only receive links can't hurt, though.
The emails sent out are short (around a paragraph), and every email that is sent to you has an 'unregister' link at the bottom that you can click and you will stop receiving emails regarding that search result.
Not bad at all. I had the same idea and was about to implement it, but you beat me to it. The only suggestion (small one) that I have, is that once you register for the first time, and it suggests you register again for another keyword, the city drop-down menu changes back to default. Generally speaking (although not always the case), the requester would probably choose the same city for every keyword search.
I was just speaking with someone this morning about setting up CG updates to look for freelance gigs. Great start. Web workers will need to track several, if not all, cities though.
You can sign up for as many cities as you want, I couldn't think of an easy way to combine multiple cities/search terms without creating an account, which defeats the simple/quick signup aspect I was aiming for.
To be honest, it was just a little web app I wrote last night. No marketing or business model, although I can see how one could make money off of ads in the emails?
I'm not really looking to develop this into a business, just thought it would be useful and some people would get some use out of it. :)
This site will likely either get down down for TOS violations - or its spidering IP will get blocked by craigslist.
If anyone on hackernews wants a (more powerful) ruby program/lib to do this exact thing (with multi-city amd regex search support!), I recommend you check out craigwatch/libcraigscrape : http://www.derosetechnologies.com/community/libcraigscrape
I agree - I've been using craigwatch for a while - once you configure your report, I keep a cronjob running once a day to update me with all the new stuff in my area that I might be interested in. The results are way better then craigslist's or these other online systems. Once its setup, it just works automatically - Plus, I dont have to worry about all the spam coming in from a forked-over email address
For me, my needs were a little complex, so I didnt want to invest my time in a bunch of searches on a site that might go away in a week. With craigwatch its just a simple gem install, and you know its not going anywhere since you can run it on your own box. Its well written too - I made a couple improvements on the lib for my purposes and it was a painless process
I've noted, over the years, many sites that scrape craigslist data for one purpose or another. They run for a few months, get popular, get noticed by craigslist, get shut down.
Do you have ongoing communications with them to avoid this fate?
how popular is your site? I remember they shut down some real estate site that mashed up craiglist data with google maps that got shut down pretty quickly. Not sure what the name was.
Then again, http://www.housingmaps.com/ is still functional, and might be the most popular Craigslist mashup -- I'm assuming they have a deal in place with CL.
u) use automated means, including spiders, robots, crawlers, data mining
tools, or the like to download data from the Service - unless expressly
permitted by craigslist;
If you are serious about this site and you think that it could become a largish site you should definitely get permission.
Hi I've done the same thing, http://www.craigdiddy.com and I also have a list of all the other sites that do this and why mine is the best. Besides email you can currently get free sms to find out even faster (via Twitter) and I plan on releasing the non-interface code on github.
It's cool and useful--the thing is there are a ton of cool/useful apps that COULD be built on top of craigslist, but craigslist does everything in its power to prevent that from happening. Is there a reason you won't get shut down?
A craig's site I used before, has changed their name, one of the reasons for change was:
This is the big one. Craigslist doesn't like related
sites that use their 'Craig' name. And that's only fair.
As always, I try to do everything possible not to
irritate the big guy. The site hasn't drawn his wrath
yet, and this change is an important step to keep it
that way.
In fact, thank you for not requiring me to create an account or register or asking if I wanted to receive valuable offers via e-mail.
I'll comment back if it finds anything, but as far as the paint on the outside goes, it looks nice and is something I would definitely use.
[edit] - technically you did create an account and I did have to click a link to activate. I still stand by the thank you (and that's just smart going anyway).
I like the e-mail note. It only found one item but it said "A few items have been founding matching <my criteria>", which I take to mean that it groups its findings together in one e-mail, rather than sending an e-mail every time something is found.
Just my own pet peeve and this is disgustingly nit-picky and petty, but: "1 File(s) copied" has always bothered me. A plural check would be an improvement. Of course, had there been a plural check, I wouldn't have been able to comment yet.
I think the site is OK, but I get this same general functionality from doing a search on craigslist and then adding that search as an RSS feed. While I don't get INSTANT updates, I'm in my RSS reader often enough during the day that I usually see things quickly enough. Still, not a bad idea, and if you're really looking to be the first person to see a new post, I can see how this would come in really handy.
I used to do that, but I'm not always at my computer. This way I can have results emailed to my iPhone and instantly be notified. SMS isn't a bad idea either now that I think about it...
I've been a fan of http://www.craigslistwatch.com/ for a long time, and they'd never gotten banned but unfortunately currently undergoing some sort of restructuring.
38 comments
[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 180 ms ] threador are you doing the smart thing and just sending people a single email "We've found a new match" with a link to the craigslist search results, sorted for their search preferences?
Giving your users the option to only receive links can't hurt, though.
As of now I must go to Google and run a term+date site:cl.org to get results for all states. That works, but it does not send me updates.
Might get spammy.
I don't see a revenue model anywhere. Nor a marketing model. Pull out the checkbook for adsense?
I'm not really looking to develop this into a business, just thought it would be useful and some people would get some use out of it. :)
If anyone on hackernews wants a (more powerful) ruby program/lib to do this exact thing (with multi-city amd regex search support!), I recommend you check out craigwatch/libcraigscrape : http://www.derosetechnologies.com/community/libcraigscrape
Do you have ongoing communications with them to avoid this fate?
They also disabled Jeff Atwood's multi-city search: http://www.codinghorror.com/craigslist/ (he posted the letter he got from them)
Then again, http://www.housingmaps.com/ is still functional, and might be the most popular Craigslist mashup -- I'm assuming they have a deal in place with CL.
u) use automated means, including spiders, robots, crawlers, data mining tools, or the like to download data from the Service - unless expressly permitted by craigslist;
If you are serious about this site and you think that it could become a largish site you should definitely get permission.
In fact, thank you for not requiring me to create an account or register or asking if I wanted to receive valuable offers via e-mail.
I'll comment back if it finds anything, but as far as the paint on the outside goes, it looks nice and is something I would definitely use.
[edit] - technically you did create an account and I did have to click a link to activate. I still stand by the thank you (and that's just smart going anyway).
I like the e-mail note. It only found one item but it said "A few items have been founding matching <my criteria>", which I take to mean that it groups its findings together in one e-mail, rather than sending an e-mail every time something is found.
Just my own pet peeve and this is disgustingly nit-picky and petty, but: "1 File(s) copied" has always bothered me. A plural check would be an improvement. Of course, had there been a plural check, I wouldn't have been able to comment yet.
- make the data sticky, if you give me an error when I enter a '+' in the email address, I want the stuff I previously entered to be there
But it looks nice, I'm hoping to get a free bike