The analysis of Craigslist competitors 2011 Vs 2022 is misleading.
Some of those companies that "failed" had pretty great outcomes. For example, CodeAcademy sold for over $500 million - not bad for a media business! Elance and Odesk merged and rebranded as Upwork, currently worth over $2 billion.
Really enjoyed understanding the 'Density' part, and how Network Density can kill a Network - till now I always assumed 'More Dense' -> The better, but in case of Craiglist - More is Not Better - as handling more density poses different Set of Challenges.
Do you think a Better Discovery Mechanism can help solve Dense Networks?
There's nuance depending on the type of marketplace. In general though, the denser the network, the more challenging it is to match the appropriate supply with demand and vice versa. Enhancing search / discoverability would certainly be an important vector of the product to improve to facilitate increasing the carrying capacity of the network and deal with denser networks. Amazon is a good example here. A variety of data is used to surface products that are most relevant to consumers to facilitate more transactions. They also allow users to find exactly what they're looking for by providing a detailed taxonomy of products and granular search. In fact, Amazon actually precedes Google in product search which furthers this point.
The analysis of Craigslist competitors 2011 Vs 2022 is misleading.
Some of those companies that "failed" had pretty great outcomes. For example, CodeAcademy sold for over $500 million - not bad for a media business! Elance and Odesk merged and rebranded as Upwork, currently worth over $2 billion.
Good catch on Upwork. The point isn't to mislead here, just to point out that not every category requires its own vertical solution.
Really enjoyed understanding the 'Density' part, and how Network Density can kill a Network - till now I always assumed 'More Dense' -> The better, but in case of Craiglist - More is Not Better - as handling more density poses different Set of Challenges.
Do you think a Better Discovery Mechanism can help solve Dense Networks?
There's nuance depending on the type of marketplace. In general though, the denser the network, the more challenging it is to match the appropriate supply with demand and vice versa. Enhancing search / discoverability would certainly be an important vector of the product to improve to facilitate increasing the carrying capacity of the network and deal with denser networks. Amazon is a good example here. A variety of data is used to surface products that are most relevant to consumers to facilitate more transactions. They also allow users to find exactly what they're looking for by providing a detailed taxonomy of products and granular search. In fact, Amazon actually precedes Google in product search which furthers this point.