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Ask HN: Why Does Craigslist Have No Official Mobile Apps?
1 point by amac on Feb 23, 2014 | hide | past | favorite | 5 comments
It's reasonably beyond doubt that mobile is where most people will access information online - including classifieds. I understand Craigslist was founded on the desktop web however my question is; why do they still not have a native app for mobile? Is this due to resource, or perhaps a business or philosophical choice?

Ebay appear to have revived their marketplace businesses with Ebay.com, Gumtree etc on mobile. Personally in regards to ecommerce, I much prefer mobile to the desktop experience.



I don't know why, and the third party apps (at least the Android ones) have a track record of shady doings (revoking upgrades, creating new "premium" editions atop existing ones to force repayment, etc)

I always figured it was due to the site being simple enough to make work well on mobile.


Does their website work well in a mobile browser?


Sure, I guess it does work but from a distribution perspective, they could probably reach a larger audience with apps (The UI could also be improved but that's another debate).

You could argue their current approach works for their mission - though not consumers.


it does have a basic mobile site that has the same functionality as the main site


Maybe for the same reason HN does not have an API and developers are forced to scrape the site.




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