The point I was making (and it isn’t beside the point because it is MY point. Not theirs, not yours, not anyone else’s, but mine. And because it’s my point, it can never be besides the point), is that Craigslist’s aesthetic is an absolute abomination. It may very well be beside their point. Actually, I am certain it is, and my guess is that that was what you meant by it being beside the point…. But again, my point is that it’s atrocious. Craigslist would agree. They want their design to be atrocious and they are extremely happy to continue to be a phenomenal success in that regard. But my point is that they are still atrocious.

And that sucks, because, as the geniuses behind Blu Dot say, good design is good. And I’d like to think that, everything else being equal, good design will always win out over poor design, at least eventually. Apple used to be the great exception to the rule, but they too are now starting to fit the universal law that design wins. Craigslist is now perhaps the leading exception to the rule, though in their case I’d argue that not everything is equal. But ignoring that for the time being, I don’t like the fact that poor design has as much mind-share as Craigslist does. That’s my point.

Everyone may use craigslist but at its heart it is a site for people who don’t really care how it looks but just want it to work. It is not my design aesthetic but it really does work. The reality is that they feel a real passion for what they’re doing and they don’t actually consider the ‘business case’ for anything they do. So I just think calling it an abomination is beside the point because it’s not what they’re about, and that’s not because they have different business motives. Also, in terms of commerce only craigslist and eBay can be said to have had a direct impact on the newspaper classifieds business because they are much more enormous than everyone else doing the same things combined.