There have been a number of startups take aim at Craiglist as of late. That's no surprise, really. The UI is wretched, there's no social sharing component, and there's no mobile Website and no mobile app. There's definitely room for disruption here, right?

That concept has had a trial run, of sorts, within Rosedale's other startup project LoveMachine as a way for developers to bid on tasks that need to be done. And CoffeeandPower sounds somewhat similar to the real-time service offered by Zaarly, which also opened to the public today.

There are a couple of key differences however.

First, CoffeeandPower utilizes a virtual currency. Users who sign up and give their cellphone numbers so they can receive SMS updates are automatically seeded with C$20 to get started. C$ is exchanged when goods are bought and sold. More can be purchased (at an exchange rate of US$0.75 for C$1) and users will be able to "cash out" as well. As many of the transactions on the site might be quite small, the virtual currency will help minimize transaction fees for every exchange. In other words, you can earn from C$ and then buy things on from other users without any fees.

Second, CoffeeandPower really emphasizes the community around this marketplace. That's not a surprise when you think of Philip Rosedale's work in creating the virtual world Second Life and its online community and economy. Users will be able to chat with each other, both in a public timeline and in private messaging and video chat.

Rosedale stresses the importance of creating a "highly connected early community of content creators," something that SecondLife did quite successfully. There are other aspects of the virtual world that have influenced the design of CoffeeandPower, Rosedale says. It's a

"place where people can create new and unique value for each other. So choices like using live public chat to let everyone 'near' each other easily talk - that comes right from SL. Also that it needs to be fun, crazy, quirky - again these are the ways things like this get started. Gotta get some basic parts in place and then get out of the way and let people do strange and beautiful things with it. We bet there will be a much larger and different range of things people will do with CoffeeandPower than anyone (including us) can initially imagine - just like Second Life."

Rosedale co-founded Second Life in 1999. He stepped down as CEO in 2008, although he did take the reigns of the company again briefly last year as an interim CEO.

If you've ever used craigslist before then you know, it's just not very good. That's not to say you can't find what you need on there. The site is full of amazing deals and goods and services of all kinds, but navigating it involves opening new browser tab after browser tab, going back and forth and generally losing your way.

For those of you who are tired of the craigslist user experience from circa 1996, head on over to craiggers, the site that lets you interact with Craigslist the way you ought to.

Beyond navigation - which is quite an improvement already - craiggers adds on a new layer of functionality when it comes to searching. No longer do you have to search simply within a single geographic area. As the site points out, "there are cases when searching outside your immediate community benefits both seekers and providers," giving the example of searching for a stolen bike or adopting a dog. When you search on craiggers, you can specify that you want to see results from neighboring locations and it will show you those as well.

Furthermore, if you wanted to search craigslist repeatedly, say for a job or an apartment, craiggers will not only let you save the search to repeat later, but it will also send you an email notification twice a day of results.

craiggers: An Example for Developers

For those of you out there interested in more than simply craiglist searches, there's another interesting aspect to craiggers - it was built using the 3taps API. We first wrote about 3taps last month when the company launched at the Data 2.0 conference, explaining how the company wanted to "democratize the exchange of data."

Through the 3taps API, data from craigslist, eBay, Indeed, Etsy, Amazon and a host of other services is available in real-time, making mash-ups like this possible. Craiggers was built by the 3taps team as an example of the potential of its offering and we think it makes quite an argument.

It's hard to say what the effect of shuttering Adult Services will be on the profitability of the sex trade. But it will certainly curtail Craigslist's ability to profit from sex traders.

By focusing on Adult Services, Craigslist's opponents are targeting a symptom instead of a problem.

"If Craigslist is seriously committed to ending the site's use as a platform for sex trafficking and the sexual enslavement of children and young women, it will immediately close the remaining sections around the world," the groups said in statement.

Ending the site's use as a platform. Not ending abusive sex trafficking, because shutting down Adult Services won't do that. Really, advocates want Craigslist to stop being a "digital pimp," to borrow Microsoft researcher Danah Boyd's phrase. From an advocate's perspective, the fact that Craigslist makes money off of prostitution and sex trafficking - some of it voluntary, some of it coerced and some involving minors - colors anything the company says.

Profit is a powerful motivator and the fact that Craigslist makes so much money off these ads undermines its moral authority [UPDATE: A reader points out that Craigslist started charging for these ads after negotiations with attorneys general and National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, so that credit card information could be kept on file. But the ads now constitute a significant portion of the site's revenue]. But is ending that revenue stream a worthy pursuit, given the strong arguments that Craigslist does more good than harm by making it easy for law enforcement to find and track sex traffickers, and empowering prostitutes to escape often-abusive middlemen?

On Monday, there were 23,453 ads posted in the "Adult Services" section across Craigslist sites for cities outside the U.S., according to the anti-human trafficking advocacy group The Polaris Project. By comparison, there were 12,834 ads posted in Adult Services" in the U.S. on Tuesday, July 21, 2009. (Singapore, where the Internet is censored for porn, is the only Craigslist site without an Adult Services section. Ironically, Singapore has an aboveground sex industry regulated by the government.) Getting the section taken down in the rest of the world is now top priority for the groups behind this push.

Craigslist fumbled its public response to accusations that it encourages abusive prostitution (see Feeling Burned By the Press, Craigslist Hunkers Down), even though it has two strong arguments from both the free speech and human rights angles as well as the protection of the law. Perhaps we'll see a better defense based on data collected during the Adult Services blackout when Craigslist testifies before Congress during a hearing on sex trafficking of minors on Sept. 15.

Last week, Craigslist shut down "adult services," which normally features paid advertisments for sex. "Adult services" was recently the subject of legal threats from 18 states, but it looks like it was media coverage that drove the people behind Craigslist underground. Craigslist has not responded to any media inquiries since the shutdown.

In the special, CNN's Amber Lyon approached founder Craig Newmark after an event and asked him some accusatory questions about how the site polices its community. Newmark appeared very uncomfortable; at points he was unable to answer. He ended up looking very bad.

In the days after the special, Newmark was friendly and very responsive to my emails. He cited "iPad Compulsive Disorder" when I thanked him for responding so quickly. The company also responded to the controversy fairly aggressively on its blog, responding directly to advocates quoted by CNN, outlining its manual screening policy, and ripping apart the claim that eBay classifieds (proposed as an alternative to Craigslist) are "family-friendly." CEO Jim Buckmaster even posted a letter accusing Lyon of sensationalism and self-promotion.

The CNN story that put founder Newmark in an unfavorable spotlight.

Newmark also published an op-ed, "What I Should Have Said to CNN's Amber Lyon," defending himself. He cites his tendency toward Asperger's Syndrome, a disorder on the autistic spectrum, and the fact that he has not been at the helm of Craigslist for 10 years.

Now, Silence From Craigslist

But the media has not gotten a peep from Craigslist since the "adult services" blackout. "Sorry, no statement," spokeswoman Susan MacTavish Best said when The New York Times asked about the blackout. IPad-compulsive Newmark has not responded to me in three days. Asked via Twitter to do an interview and "talk about anything you like," Newmark responded "not soon."

Meanwhile, the media continue to cover the story, and not in the best light. "Some See a Ploy as Craigslist Blocks Sex Ads," The New York Times wrote. Lyon accused Newmark of lying in a follow-up segment on CNN.

The law is on Craigslist's side - websites are not liable for content posted by users under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. But Craigslist has given up anyway. It's not because its owners want to prevent sex trafficking - Craigslist has maintained that it does more harm than good because law enforcement agencies can use it just as easily as pimps can.

Letting Go of the Narrative

From here, it looks like Craigslist botched its defense from the beginning by attacking its accusers and presenting an unpolished explanation of how it polices its community of 50 million users.

The 30-person company doesn't have the muscle or the savvy to fight a public relations battle. But it may be hurting itself more by clamming up.

Or maybe it's smart for Craigslist to sit back and let the media argue both sides of its case. The Huffington Post has a story, "How Censoring Craigslist Helps Pimps, Child Traffickers and Other Abusive Scumbags, written by a Microsoft researcher."

What do you think - should Craigslist speak up? Or hold its peace?

Last week, craigslist was the subject of a primetime CNN story that criticized the site for "not doing enough" to prevent child sex trafficking, quoting a youth rights advocate who said craigslist is the primary venue for selling minors for sex. The reporter ambushed craigslist founder Craig Newmark, who appeared to be unable to answer her questions about what the site is doing to prevent exploitation of underage girls.

Craigslist later responded that it works "tirelessly" to prevent ads for minors in the adult services section and works with law enforcement and non-profits to fight child sex trafficking.

But the story continues to ripple through the media, and CNN ran a second segment two days ago.

Craigslist a red herring?

There are ads for minors in craigslist's adult services section, but craigslist is "not by any means" the main venue, said Andrea Austin, a spokesperson for the anti-human trafficking organization Polaris Project, which runs the National Human Trafficking Hotline.

"I'm wary that people are getting so caught up in craigslist that they're forgetting why they're talking about it," Austin said. "Sex trafficking happens and it happens in the United States. Craigslist is just one vehicle that traffickers use."

Craigslist asked users to send an email to the site if they see a prohibited listing, such as one that explicitly or implicitly advertises a minor for sex. But despite the increased attention to the issue, craigslist said it has seen "absolutely nothing" in the way of an increase of crimes reported to legal@craigslist.org.

An ad from the "casual encounters" section of craigslist in Washington, D.C. Ads in "casual encounters" display links to "flag" a post as prohibited, but ads in "adult services" do not. Thanks to @capnleela for help finding sketchy ads.

That suggests that either the ads are so cleverly coded that ordinary users can't tell that they are about minors, or that violations are not as rampant as media reports imply.

Policing user-generated content

Craigslist is not legally liable for posts that advertise prostitution or child prostitution under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, said Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights advocacy group.

That's the same provision that makes it possible for sites like Yelp and Twitter and features like Amazon user reviews to exist. Without that protection, the potential liability of allowing users to contribute content would be too great to allow such sites to exist without intensive monitoring, he said.

Ads for sex are getting through

Craigslist isn't legally responsible for any of the content uploaded by users. But advertising for illegal services is against its terms of use and craigslist says it screens all ads and rejects those that are about sex.

But check the adult services section of any major city and you'll see ads with pictures of scantily-clad men and women, offering a massage or an ambiguous "good time," often with a dollar figure per hour. Ads that could be for underage teens and children are harder to find, but they're there, usually with code words such as "fresh," "new" or "just 18."

Those ads could be getting through because they don't explicitly mention sex, Opsahl said.

"In a law enforcement context, if you brought that [ad] to a jury accusing someone of prostitution, the jury would probably acquit because that doesn't prove it," he said.

Craigslist would have to ban all posts with "a suggestive photo, measurements and a dollar figure, and that seems to be a tough rule," he said.

Over 750,000 ads have been rejected, under unwritten standards

Newmark said the site has rejected over 725,000 adult services ads, but declined to spell out the guidelines craigslist uses:

I can't discuss specific screening criteria without helping the bad guys get around our protective measures, but I can say that in order to post, each user must confirm that she or he is advertising only legal services, and our screeners look for anything that may be inconsistent with that representation.

And of course, each user provides us with credit card information and a telephone number that can be tracked back to them in the event of unlawful behavior.

Pimps can use craigslist - but so can cops

And that may be the strongest case for keeping craigslist's adult services section around - it brings trafficking above ground.

Police can use the information on craigslist to stage stings, which would do more to combat sex trafficking than anything craigslist could do, Opsahl said.

"As I understand it, craigslist is actually trying really hard to be a good actor here," Opsahl said.

If you suspect human trafficking on craigslist, alert law enforcement and send an email to legal@craigslist.org. You can also report suspected trafficking to the National Human Trafficking Resource Center by calling 1-888-373-7888. More information about human trafficking, of minors and otherwise in the United States, is here.

Austin-based startup BidModo is launching a public beta today that hopes to simplify this process for small businesses and provide them with better information to make better decisions, instead of simply relying on word of mouth referrals.

Instead of just putting an ad out there and getting back simple replies, the responses come from registered companies and are organized on a dashboard. Each company has an on-site profile, containing contact information, a company history, provided services, previous clients, certificates and licenses, and a list of references. Each company also has a rating card, which shows how that business rates with its clients on ten different characteristics, from bid timeliness to industry knowledge.

If you've ever used something like Craigslist, then you realize how hard, or even impossible, getting all of this information would be. You would practically need to hire a private investigator.

For end users - those posting the job - the service is entirely free and provides the user with information about bidders, vendor ratings and a dashboard comparing bids. Vendors only pay for selected leads. A vendor dashboard provides information on ROI, monthly sales data, ratings feedback and industry stats. And part of BidModo's focus is on local business, so service requests only come from the region, which is something we think people, wherever they are, will stand behind.

"Prior to BidModo, I ran a video production company," said founder Toby Schwartz in a press release. "I would regularly hear of companies in town turning to New York or San Francisco to hire for their video needs. And I can't tell you how many times I'd meet people in Austin who would comment that they wished they knew I was here."

Currently, BidiModo is live nationally, with over 80 cities and connections in more than 100 different categories.

NeighborGoods is currently in alpha testing and accepting users by invitation until October 7th, when it launches publicly. But it is already gaining traction on Twitter (where Krimmel has over 12,000 followers) with people who have early access to the website, like @typefiend, who shared this note:

"Set up my first #Neighborgoods transaction. Someone's borrowing the Bissell Carpet Cleaner for some pet cleanup. http://bit.ly/lh6gR"

Krimmel said she's reaching out to church groups, school groups, green organizations, and mommy groups to get them active on the site and to help identify what goods and services NeighborGoods should target. The site will also launch a Facebook Connect feature.

"We think people will share with people they know at first," says Krimmel. "We want to get people over that hurdle and start telling the story of things: power tools, ladders, camping gear, bicycles. Those are the things we all have in the garage that don't get used very often. I'm hoping that the groups feature will have people sharing all kinds of crazy stuff."

NeighborGoods is fairly intuitive to use, but its success will depend on the quality and usefulness of items offered by the community. A quick look this morning found items ranging from an old analog TV to a wireless router to someone's dog (condition "beat up"). The policing of what's made available and whether the site monitors users will be key to its development. Users are rated, similar to how sellers are ranked on eBay, but what's not clear is what recourse someone has if they don't get a favorite book back or a neighbor breaks their lawnmower.

The service is one of several new barter-type platforms to emerge in the past few months. Where Couchsurfing left off with the post-college hostel crowd, Caravan is picking up, providing access to house-swap listings and rentals for creative professionals. And hungry Angelenos are using Fallen Fruit to find in-season treats from trees around L.A.

All of these projects seem to have a two-fold purpose: getting resources that you need or want, and making new friends in the process. Is using NeighborGoods easier or more productive than just ringing the doorbell? That remains to be seen.

Guest author: Laura Hertzfeld is a freelance journalist based in Los Angeles. In addition to writing for ReadWriteWeb, she is managing editor of EconomyStory.org, a Public Radio Exchange (PRX) project aggregating public media coverage of the economy.

Garage sales are no longer just for blue-haired grandmothers with teacup fetishes. While eBay and Etsy are great for selling rare or specialty items, setting up an auction or store for your mismatched cutlery might not get you the results you need. One blessing in this down economy is that we're learning to reclaim and recycle in a way that our grandmothers have been doing for years. Whether you like haggling over weird items on a Sunday or you'd simply like to list your own sale, here are some great resources.

2. GSALR: This site improves where Craigslist leaves off. While it does not offer images from sales, it does offer a map of the region, an RSS feed on new listings and a trip planner for multi-sale routes. Garage Sale Nation offers a similar tool, and the most results seem to appear in Massachusetts, Virginia, New York and Michigan.

Yard Sale Search: This site is extremely bare bones, but if you're just looking for a site to list all of the multi-family sales in your area, the results are quick and plentiful.

3. ZipGarage: ZipGarage is a site where garage sale hunters type in their postal code and receive results on sales in their area. RWW first wrote about ZipGarage in 2007. While this site is perhaps one of the best designed garage sale sites, it still lacks the users. If you're having a sale, you might still want to embed the widget to give directions to your users.

4. Upcoming and Facebook Events: Your friends DO want to buy your junk, or at the very least they want to spend Sunday drinking beer on your lawn. A great way to kick start a yard sale is to reach out to your online networks, prepare some sandwiches and treat the event like a lawn party. Upcoming and Facebook events offer great ways to announce localized events and the best part is that your friends are likely to get calendar reminders for your sale.

5. Twitter, Loopt: These location-based services are great for that last minute sale push or reminder. While nearby followers might not have planned to buy anything, if they're in the area, they just might stop by for an impulse purchase.

6.The Local Paper and Craigslist: We're sure you already know about these options, but if you're having a sale, it would be silly not to list here. With Craigslist, users can narrow their search by neighborhood and keyword, and choose to specify only those results that contain images.

*Final Tips for Sellers: After you've tweeted, listed and advertised your yard sale, remember that old school rules still apply. Some of the must-haves of a garage sales include ample signage, properly labeled tables, extra boxes and bags, a measuring tape for furniture and about $100 in small bills and quarters for change.

Take consumer electronics site Woya, for example. When faced with the daunting task of buying a new laptop without the requisite Gs needed to make that process sufficiently simple, I have been paralyzed into procrastination. In about 30 seconds, Woya showed me inexpensive, well reviewed laptops I wanted from eBay, Craigslist, Overstock, Amazon, and other sites. It did the legwork and analytics for me, making the process entirely painless.

Users can check out results from retail sites, auction sites, and online classifieds from three simple tabs on the product page. They can scope out specs and reviews for a given product, and Woya lets the user know if they think now is a good time to find good deals on the product. The Deal Digger function is particularly useful, similar to Priceline's name-your-own-price function. Users can select parameters and get real-time updates if and when the selected product becomes available at a given price point.

Woya also shows trends and analytics for the product:

Of course, there are social sharing options, and the site apparently allows users to login via OpenID (although this process was a bit buggy and ultimately dysfunctional on my end, perhaps because of a Chrome-related browser incompatibility issue).

All things being equal, Woya's consumer-friendly, ad-free, highly detailed, comparison shopping approach reminded us of discount travel sites such as Priceline, Travelocity, Expedia, and their like. Those sites enjoy their tremendous popularity for good reasons: They have taken a boring, painful process and made it easier, faster, and less expensive for the end user. For a small, Bay Area-based startup barely six months old with just one full-time employee, Woya has done a great deal to simplify and streamline online shopping in a powerful and unique way. We'd love to see the site grow to encompass all verticals of consumer products.

In return, Craigslist has now filed its own suit in federal court in South Carolina, "seeking declaratory relief and a restraining order with respect to criminal charges he [McMaster] has repeatedly threatened against Craigslist and its executives."

In his ultimatum, McMaster asks Craigslist to "remove the portions of the Internet site dedicated to South Carolina and its municipal regions which contain categories for and functions allowing for the solicitation of prostitution and the dissemination and posting of graphic pornographic material" within ten (10) days." Given that anybody can post anything on Craigslist (except for the new 'Adult Services' section, which is now closely monitored), this is far too broad a statement and Buckmaster rightly argues that Craigslist would just have to close shop in South Carolina.

The South Carolina "adult services" section of Craigslist currently only features a few ads, and they are about as tame as the ads for chatlines for singles that run on late-night TV all over the country. At this point, most ads just feature a (non-pornographic) photo and a phone number.

A number of legal experts have argued that the "safe harbor" provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) protects Craigslist from criminal prosecution, as, according to the DMCA, an "interactive computer service" can not be held responsible for content posted on the service's site.

Connecticut's Attorney General, Richard Blumenthal, called Craigslist "a blatant Internet brothel". And given all the negative publicity around the service (including the story of the "Craigslist killer" that kept tabloids and local TV news shows stocked with material for days in April), the company clearly decided that it was time to revamp the red light section of its service.

It is important to note, though, that it doesn't seem like Craigslist could actually be held accountable for the ads placed in its site, instead, it rather seems like the company simply gave in to the mounting pressure.

There is, of course, no denying that the French teachers that advertise in Craigslist's "Erotic Services" (ES) section are probably not trained linguists. By 11am this morning, the ES section for Portland, OR (link is SFW, but everything after that is not) already featured over 300 ads, very few of which we could even post a screenshot of here on RWW.

Reborn as "Adult Services" - With Adult Supervision

Craiglist, however, is not shutting the ES section down completely. Instead, it will be reborn as a new "adult services" section, where all posts will be reviewed before they are published on the site (to ensure that they are from "legal adult service providers"). New ads will cost $10, and can be reposted for $5.

Of course, we can't help but think that this will only drive the erotic services providers to other outlets (or, even worse, back on the street). We also can't help but wonder what euphemisms advertisers in the new "adult services" section will come up with to still sell their wares on Craigslist. Or, as our own Jolie O'Dell pointed out in our RWW backchannel, maybe this will turn out to be a boon for the newspaper industry and alternative weekly newspapers, who might just pick up some extra classified ads in the near future.

CC-licensed images used courtesy of Flickr users MoToMo and Benimoto.

Popular playlist sharing site Muxtape got taken down by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in mid-August and it is unfortunately still non-operational. The fact is that Muxtape didn't pay its internet radio licensing fees. In our recent RWW Live podcast on online music, Lucas Gonze (creator of similar playlist service Webjay, which was acquired by Yahoo in 2006) said that Muxtape was "trying to become a big service, i.e. get too big to fail and so cut a deal [with labels]." Unfortunately Muxtape failed to escape the notice of the RIAA.

NetShare (iPhone app)

Nullriver's NetShare was an iPhone app that, according to Gizmodo, allowed you to tether your laptop to your iPhone using the handset's 3G modem as your laptop's own. Basically this let you have full Internet access on your laptop without Wi-Fi, for free. There was talk that this violates AT&T's terms of service, but whatever the reason the app has been pulled from Apple's App Store. The last message on the site is dated 4 August and states: "We're working with Apple to get NetShare back up on the AppStore." But we're not holding our breath.

Image courtesy of Gizmodo

The CLQ

Adam Steinberg of EventVue wrote in to tell us that he misses The CLQ (the acronym stands for Champions League for Quake style games). It's an app that kept track of "millions of game players (Quake, Unreal, Half-life, Tribes, etc.) on thousands of online game servers." It was a very popular app in its niche, however it was stopped. The developers claim that this was due to "incredible amounts of e-mail, GameSpy monopolizing access to game servers, constant upgrading of hardware and software to process increased traffic, games getting their own statistics, etc."

The good news for CLQ fans is that one of the developers, Nico de Vries, is currently working on a version 2.0.

PubSub

PubSub was one of our favorite 'future search' products back in the early days of web 2.0 - you could enter keywords and the product would deliver search results to you automatically. This feature is now common place in news sites, for example Google News has it, but back in '03-'05 PubSub was an innovator.

So it was a great product, but PubSub spectacularly imploded in mid-2006 after founder Bob Wyman blogged about "internal political issues". Wyman left the company shortly after and the product sunk along with its creator. Perhaps PubSub will rise again, because apparently it still exists today. Here is the message on its frontpage currently:

Others have risen since to take over the reins in future search. A few of our favorites are ZapTXT, FeedRinse and BlastFeed. We discussed those and other services here. But we'll always have a soft spot for PubSub...

AllPeers

In March we heard that P2P browser plug-in AllPeers had shut down, a blow to a market that seemed very promising back in 2006. AllPeers set out to add "file sharing to the web browser". Technically the service seemed fine, however the reason for the closure according to the company was that "we have not achieved the kind of growth in our user base that our investors were expecting, and as a result we are not able to continue operating the service."

Scrabulous (Facebook app)

We reported in April that Scrabulous, the extremely popular but unauthorized Scrabble Facebook app, was under fire from Hasbro and Mattel. Those two companies own the rights to Scrabble - Hasbro in North America, and Mattel in the rest of the world. In July the bigcos had their way and Scrabulous was taken offline.

After more legal ducking and weaving, in which the app was first pulled in North America and then internationally too, the app got re-born under the name Wordscraper. It uses circles instead of Scrabble-like square tiles. Unfortunately the change isn't proving too popular. This comment by a Facebook user is an example of the reaction:

"I loved Scrabulous !
Wordscraper is kinda the same but I do not like the round tiles , it makes it difficult to play , kinda messes everything together, change it to SQUARES and it would be alot better."

The old version, with squares

Pandora

OK you can still use Pandora in the US, despite concerns that it might be on the verge of closing. But those of us who live outside the US haven't been able to access this lovely music discovery service for too long a time.

Qumana

Tris Hussey tweeted to tell us that Qumana was a great java-based blog editor, "easy and light." Unfortunately it is not being updated anymore and the homepage isn't accessible.

Crgslst

Back in March we reported on a very slick multi-city search tool for Craigslist, called crgslst. As we noted, Craigslist itself doesn't offer a multi-search service. By combining the publicly available RSS feeds from Craigslist with AJAX, crgslst fills this need "so fast, we left the vowels behind." We noted at the time that crgslst may be in violation of the Craigslist terms of use and could face the same shutdown that other similar projects have in the past.

Indeed this has turned out to be the case. Currently when you visit crglst, you are greeted with this despairing pop-up message:

ShareYourOPML

This site for sharing OPML files was "retired" by creator Dave Winer in January. He wrote at the time that "now that Google and Bloglines both have discovery mechanisms, based on what you and others like, there would only be a future for SYO if it were a thriving and growing community, and it isn't."

The good news for OPML fans is that Toluu has risen to fill the void. We reviewed it in March, noting that it lets you share your OPML with others in order to discover new feeds, see what your friends are reading, and even discover new people who share your same interests. We were impressed by the service, even more so in May when enhancements were announced.

So perhaps, sometimes, there is a silver lining in the dark cloud of web apps that close or get shut down!

Have Your Say

Tell us in the comments which web apps have disappeared in recent times that you used to love. Also let us know if anything has come along since that you perhaps like even better.

TeachStreet is based in Seattle and raised a $2.25 million Series A round led be Madrona Venture Group in February 2008. TeachStreet's strategy for now seems to be to roll the service out slowly, one metro area at a time. Currently, Portland and Seattle are the only locations officially available on the site, though teaches from anywhere can list their classes on the site as well.

TeachStreet aggregates classes from various sources and allows teachers to list their own classes (or claim a class that TeachStreet already lists). At least for the Portland area, most of the classes listed on the site are from local community colleges, community organizations, and language or music schools. Teachstreet wants to inspire local experts to start teaching, but for now, it seems that it is mostly established teachers and schools who are listing their services on the site.

Finding Classes

TeachStreet's search functions are very comprehensive and allow prospective students to restrict their search to different class sizes, age groups, ability levels, and days of the week a given class is offered. In our tests, the results we got from the search were typically very acurate (down to the days and times the classes were offered).

But What About Craigslist?

TeachStreet's most direct competitor is obviously Craigslist. In contrast to Craigslist, though, TechStreet offers its data in a far more structured way and it allows students to leave reviews of classes as well. TeachStreet's inventory of classes is also a lot more comprehensive than anything Craigslist could offer. Some enterprising TeachStreet users have, however, found a way of using TeachStreet as a tool to create Craigslist ads.

Another competitor for TeachStreet is Takelessons.com, though it focusses mostly on music, dance, and acting lessons and hence has a slightly more restricted inventory of classes.

TeachStreet is an interesting tool, both for teachers to gain more visibility, and for students to find the right classes. Thanks to its excellent search functions and well-designed layout, it stands a good chance of making a name for itself as it continues to roll out its service accross the US.

Social Classifieds

The new classifieds section is also going to make better use of MySpace's social tools, allowing users to target their MySpace friends for their listings. This social aspect is what can give classifieds on MySpace (or any social network for that matter) a competitive advantage over Craigslist. At the same time, though, it's noteworthy, as Caroline McCarthy also points out, that Facebook's classifieds section has never quite become an important service on the site.

The only classifieds sites Oodle doesn't scrape are Craigslist and Kijiji. The relationship between Craiglist and Oodle has been especially rocky, as we reported here. By basically providing a meta-search service, Oodle relies less on its own active users to provide a comprehensive service.

The most advanced features of the MySpace integration, however, only work for ads posted by MySpace users themselves. Right now, there are not too many active listings posted by MySpace users, yet. However, as these ads start making their way onto users' profiles, using MySpace Classifieds for ads could easily become a viral phenomenon on MySpace.

Participants in today's RWW Live were: ReadWriteTalk host Sean Ammirati, Steve O'Hear from our network blog last100, myself, Bernard Lunn and Marshall Kirkpatrick. You can listen to the podcast below.