It’s with a heavy heart that I must announce that PadMapper is no longer including Craigslist rental listings – they’re currently being wiped from the search index. I recently received a Cease and Desist letter from Craigslist, and wasn’t able to get a meeting or convince Craigslist’s lawyer that PadMapper was beneficial to Craigslist and apartment hunters in general. They allow mobile apps to display their listings if you buy a license from them, but not websites.
If you or any of your friends that PadMapper has helped would like to weigh in and tell them how PadMapper has helped you search through Craigslist, you can contact them at:
jim@craigslist.org – Jim Buckmaster, CEO
craig@craigslist.org – Craig Newmark, Founder
If you do contact them, please, please keep it civil. Perhaps if they see how many people PadMapper has helped, they’ll be willing to consider changing their minds.
PadMapper still has a lot of other sources, I’ll be adding more, and I’ll keep mapping pads, but it’s a sad day for pad mapping and apartment hunting. Craigslist is a really important source of apartment listings, and I hope we can get it back someday.
Thanks everyone,
Eric ☮
UPDATE: Many of you have asked me how you can post to PadMapper now that Craigslist is gone. I just posted about PadLister, a completely free way to post directly to PadMapper. I still want to get Craigslist back on there, but in the meantime, it’d be great if you guys could encourage any landlords you know to post their vacancies on PadLister as well (they should, of course, continue to post on Craigslist). Alternately, you can post to Oodle, RentalHomesPlus, Rent.com, ApartmentFinder, or one of the more local sources PadMapper picks up. Of these, Oodle is also free.
UPDATE 2:
If your area is looking empty without CList, you may want to enable Rent.com’s listings to show up. Look under “Show More Filters” and check that on if it’s not.
UPDATE 3:
I’m bringing Craigslist listings back! Here’s the blog post.
Just emailed them as well. Leave it to CL to make sure things don’t progress. If they had it their way everything would stay the exact same and never improve with a dash of convolution… I believe it is their business motto 😉
I just sent this:
Dear Jim and Craig,
Padmapper is the best thing that has happened to the apartment\home search market since Zilpy.com went by the wayside in late 2008.
Padmapper makes it easy to search by location for rentals and aids in bypassing incorrectly entered or simply nonexistent addresses on rentals posted in CraigsList. It helps someone to quickly visualize the rental location rather than having to use a mapping tool to search (sometimes fruitlessly) for the correct location of the rental.
I sincerely feel that CraigsList is doing itself a disservice by barring Padmapper from enhancing CraigsList rental listings by mapping them.
I encourage you to seriously reconsider your action in regard to having your listings linked to Padmapper.
in the interest of enhancing your business,
JB
Hi! I’ve been following your website for a while now and finally got the bravery to go ahead and give you a shout out from Huffman Texas! Just wanted to say keep up the good job!
Email sent!
My letter to Jim and Craig:
Hello!
I am a longtime fan of Craigslist. To date, here are a list of things which have come into my life thanks to Craigslist:
– Two cars
– One fantastic partner of almost 5 years
– A washer and dryer (which were subsequently stolen, I posted that on CL’s missed connections, to complete the cycle)
– Two couches
– Two bed frames
– Two bikes
– One dresser (and one that I picked up and returned the same day, it’s NOT okay to put cat-pee dressers on Craigslist without warning!)
– Several bookshelves
– An oddly-shaped chair
– A cartop carrier
– Dishes
– A really great job
– Countless giggles from the best-of section
– Seven apartments (between my aforementioned Craigslisted partner and myself)
– Not to mention all of the things which Craigslisters have graciously taken off my hands!
It’s the apartment bit which brings me here today. I’m a law student in search of housing. My last apartment (not off of Craigslist, which must have been the downfall) was awful. I’m sort-of familiar with the town, but not enough to know where every house is based on the street name. I checked Padmapper for this religiously. Padmapper was the easiest, best thing to ever happen to Craigslist… and now it’s gone. I understand you don’t want them taking your product blah blah blah, but honestly? Padmapper made Craigslist apartments so much easier to use that I can’t understand how you don’t see that it was more of an asset to you than a moocher. The thought of searching for a house on Craigslist without Padmapper is so scary that I’m avoiding it altogether, which is not good, because I need a house in about 3 weeks. With Craigslist, there were perhaps 50-75 available housing options for me (Salem, Oregon, under $1k, allows dogs, keyword: yard). Now, zero.
In summary, Craigslist without Padmapper is kind of like a foreign country without a map or speaking the language– terrifying. Please restore your connection with Padmapper.
Thanks for your consideration,
—
Shelby
Don’t stop using craigslist.
They won’t sue and if they do you’d win. Just stop using their name on the site. In fact, don’t even let people see where the apartments are coming from. You’ll cover your butt. Otherwise, without craigslist, this site is pretty useless which is a shame because I’ve used it a lot.
That won’t work. If data scraping is against their terms of use, they have a right to sue to stop it… So he likely won’t win the case. But they probably won’t, seeing as they are Craigslist.
Source: I’m a lawyer, are you?
You should consider getting some legal advice on this matter and not be turned away because of a cease and desist letter. Your use of craigslist is not outright copyright infringement, you are improving on the design and therefore you will likely be able to avert any legal recourse craigslist can take against you. Seriously, go see an attorney about this.
Copyright infringement isn’t the issue… Scraping data can be a ToS violation (a breach of contract) or at worst an unauthorized access of a computer system, which gets you years if federal time.
Here’s my email I sent to Craigslist:
“Craig and Jim,
I am contacting you regarding the recent action taken against the extremely useful website PadMapper.com.
It came to my attention that a cease and desist order has been issued to PadMapper regarding their map-oriented and organized re-listing of rental postings on Craigslist.
I would like to express my remorse and confusion as to why Craigslist might take issue with a third party site that no doubt increased traffic to Craigslist, while at the same time making apartment or rental home hunting easier than ever.
Given the multitude of listings that appear on Craigslist, PadMapper’s pragmatic approach to organizing and filtering postings has made relocating much easier for many of my friends as well as myself. I moved to Los Angeles two years ago and I was able to find the listings for both residences I have rented in LA on Craigslist, via PadMapper.
As opposed to taking issue with PadMapper and requesting that they cease and desist use of information provided on Craigslist, and ultimately encouraging competition between you and PadLister, I would suggest that forming a relationship with PadMapper would be beneficial to both parties.
Happy 4th of July!”
Ok so I probably shouldn’t have put that last line in there, but seriously- what else could be motivating them?
_________________________________
Good evening,
I am an archaeologist who has had to move fairly frequently in my life. I like craiglist for it’s ability to find places with no lease to live, but it is hard to see where many of the location are without having to constantly opening us new windows- especially tricky if I have little knowledge of the new city. Linking to padmapper has ALLOWED me to use craiglist much more often, not hinder it!
Please reconsider this start-up, frankly I’m puzzled as to why one would want to shut down a site that increases traffic to your own site. It’s like refusing for google to show your site in it’s results (padmapper always links to your site), unless you’re considering stealing it’s ideas.
I hope to learn why craiglist is choosing to pursue this route.
Sincerely,
Eric, do you think you could post a copy of the letter? Thanks!
Hi Dave, sure, here it is: http://www.scribd.com/doc/97974574/PadMapper-Cease-And-Desist
Here is my letter:
“Good morning,
My name is Dave M. and I am an avid user of Craigslist. I recently discovered that you have issued a cease and desist letter to Eric at PadMapper.com, and I am writing to express my disappointment in these actions. Eric has created a great product in PadMapper, and a portion of it’s success was due to its ability to effectively interface and bring location based life to Craigslist’s posts. One of the biggest short-comings when using Craigslist for apartment hunting is its sparse and anemic UI. It doesn’t allow your users to visualize the properties that they are researching in relation to the city they are searching within. Now, I understand that completely revamping your UI for one section of posts is unreasonable; there is too high a cost with too little a reward. In a perfect world there would be a hard working individual that could write an entire UI for your apartment ads without costing you a dime. Wait…
In all seriousness, PadMapper is noting but beneficial for Craigslist. Eric’s users start their search there, but inevitably end on your site to email the property owner/manager of the listing. Sending a cease and desist letter to him for creating PadMapper is tantamount to sending one to Larry Page because there are Google search results that link back to Craigslist. You are essentially and arbitrarily destroying one of the best things to happen to Craigslist since you incorporated in 1999.
All of that being said, I give you an opportunity. I understand that an overzealous young lawyer may have sent out the letter without first realizing the repercussions it would have on the company. If this is the case, simply send Eric a letter of apology and allow him to keep driving massive business to your site. If you actually support this folly and do not have a problem with the decision that was made, then I recommend you place a large chunk of money into a stable retirement account. Why? With business practices like that, I can’t imagine Craigslist will have the term success you were hoping for.”
Hopefully all of these letter will have an impact.
I just emailed Jim at Craigstlist expressing my thoughts on how PadMapper has made Craigslist searching so much more efficient.
Eric, are you willing to post the text of the Cease & Desist letter? It would be interesting to see exactly what legal theory they believe that they can hold you liable under. If it is for a violation of their terms of service, than it is presumably for breach of contract. While courts have been reluctant to find that browse-wrap terms of service constitute a binding contract in the first place, it is a fundamental principle of contract law that the aggrieved party must prove damages resulting from the breach, and can only recover a judgement, in money (not usually an injunction) limited to the amount of their damages. Here, I cannot imagine what damages they would claim, especially considering that you are driving traffic to their site.
If the C&D letter sheds some light on this, it would be quite helpful in determining whether or not they have any genuine legal claim.
On the other hand, if their claim is for intellectual property violations, this would be even more suspect, as by their own terms-of-service they have only a non-exclusive license to the content of the posting (ownership of the copyright remains in the poster) and thus the poster retains the right to control future copying by others.
Hi Chris, sure, thanks for weighing in!
Here’s the C&D letter: http://www.scribd.com/doc/97974574/PadMapper-Cease-And-Desist
If you’d like to discuss it, I’m happy to via email (eric@padmapper.com). I agree that there’s been no damages, and that if anything, PadMapper has been beneficial for them.
Here is my polite email to Craig and Jim:
Hi Craig and Jim,
I’m writing to let you know how useful padmapper listings have been in my searches for apartments here in Brooklyn. I love both your websites and they really work hand in hand together.
Eric seems like a really nice guy. Do you think that you two can work out your differences and at least give him a chance to come up with a solution so the two of you can get back together.
Thanks for listening!! And best of luck.
Sylvia
Look for the ridiculous in everything and you will find it… Jules Renard 1890
Something told me to check out padmapper this morning – probably the influx of wasps in my apartment that my landlady won’t do anything about – and I was sad to see the news. Just sent this email:
Gentlemen!
Padmapper is awesome! I found my current fantastic apartment via Padmapper. It was a Craigslist posting with no pictures, so I normally never would have considered it, but because it was right there on a map on Padmapper, I took a chance, and sure enough ended up going with this one through Craigslist.
Padmapper is an invaluable resource for apartment hunters, especially here in Los Angeles, where the metropolis is far too huge to know all the streets and areas by name. Please reconsider and allow Padmapper to continue mapping Craigsist postings. It is a mutually beneficial relationship!
The honest thing for them to do would have been to acquire you guys–why did they not follow in the footsteps of other more successful tech companies (Facebook, Twitter, Linkden etc) and just AQUIRE the competition instead of trying to reinvent the wheel. Facebook tried it once and then decided it was easier to acquire the talent. I wish you all the best of luck and I’ve sent an email to Jim & Craig.
This is par for the Craigslist course. They don’t care about their users, only the revenue from paid listings. There’s a reason why the website still looks like it’s from 2003 and that they’ve resisted integration, mobile and product development.
It’ll take a murder for them to change… (Google the discontinued adult services and murdered masseuse for that story)
Just read the NYT article by Nick Bilton (http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/29/when-craigslist-blocks-innovations-disruptions/).
Wow, I am simply stunned – particularly after bringing up Padmapper the first time, it’s beautiful.
Hang tough Eric, hang tough.
Craigslist has just now added a mapping feature to their apartment listings.
But I can’t get it to show more than just the one listing per map page.
At least they are working on it.
If more and more independent landlords used Padlister, CL would become obsolete.
The way Padmapper gets paid through prospective tenant credit applications is ideal. This money would get paid anyway to the landlord who then pays his credit service, but Padmapper handles it for landlords frictionlessly.
If CL keeps moving toward paid job ads and paid housing ads in all markets, the Padmapper business model becomes all the more compelling.
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[…] this,” says PadMapper creator Eric DeMenthon. “Lots of people wrote to them about the PadMapper cease and desist [letter], so maybe that convinced them that it was worthwhile to do some mapping […]
[…] this,” says PadMapper creator Eric DeMenthon. “Lots of people wrote to them about the PadMapper cease and desist [letter], so maybe that convinced them that it was worthwhile to do some mapping […]
[…] this,” says PadMapper creator Eric DeMenthon. “Lots of people wrote to them about the PadMapper cease and desist [letter], so maybe that convinced them that it was worthwhile to do some mapping […]
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