We recently reported on Jobster’s fallout with Craigslist. Via Jobster Direct Post, content had been uploaded onto the popular classifieds site. Recently, however, Craig began blocking such activity. This was initially labeled by Jobster head Jason Goldberg as a “misunderstanding,” certain to work itself out in 5 business days.
Update: Whatever was going on is now officially deep-sixed. According to Goldberg:
For now, we have decided to focus elsewhere. Craigslist does not like partnering with any commercial entities and has taken the position that they are only going to support direct postings from employers. We have scoped out several viable technical workarounds which would enable us to continue helping our customers post to Craigslist, but for now we have decided that the best route for Jobster and for our customers is to work with companies and sites who want to work with us on delivering a better user experience.
Craigslist’s decision not to support Jobster’s direct post feature is unfortunate as it flies smack in the face of delivering the best user experience. Craigslist would prefer that each employer post their jobs to craigslist manually one at a time vs. having a service like Jobster help them manage multiple postings.
The story gets ‘curiouser and curiouser.’ A vendor, who will remain anonymous, recently forwarded the following e-mail correspondence they had in July with a Craigslist representative about uploading their own job content onto Craig, a la Jobster (read from bottom to top):
From: [NAME]@craigslist.org [mailto:[NAME]@craigslist.org]
Sent: Tuesday, July 11, 2006 8:16 PM
To: [NAME]
Subject: RE: Job Feeddon’t know, not through any arrangement with us certainly.
thanks for the heads up, will look into it
> [NAME], thanks for the reply. How is Jobster able to do this?
>
> http://www.jobster.com/corp/pressreldetail.jsp?id=20060613_directpost
>
>
>
> —–Original Message—–
> From: [NAME]@craigslist.org [mailto:[NAME]@craigslist.org]
> Sent: Tuesday, July 11, 2006 4:40 PM
> To: [NAME]
> Subject: Re: Job Feed
>
>
> we don’t accept feeds from other sites, thanks though
>
>
>
> On Tue, 11 Jul 2006, [NAME] wrote:
>
>> [NAME], how can we send you a job feed from our site?
So, if this e-mail is to be believed - and I think it is - then was Jobster sneaking its job content onto Craigslist without them knowing? Without their blessing?
In Goldberg’s quote above, he says, “Craigslist does not like partnering with any commercial entities.” If that’s the case, wouldn’t Jobster have found that out from their first contact with a Craigslist representative, killing even the idea of uploading Jobster content? Unless, of course, Craigslist was never even contacted.
The original e-mail from Jobster to its clients, explaining the shutdown said, “… we ensure that we are in compliance with Craiglist’s posting policies and procedures.”
Really?
August 19th, 2006 at 7:28 am
I kind of see the point of Craigslist i.e. they are a free site so why (maybe) should Jobster charge for a posting service to put a job on Craigslist.
However, if the ‘customer’ so chooses to pay someone else (be it a service of app) to make their life easier, who are Craigslist to decide what the customer does. In the end, surely they want the jobs so THEIR users get the information they want.
I reckon they are scared of the tracking data that Jobster have!!
August 23rd, 2006 at 11:36 am
When I first read of Jobster and CL on your blog, I attempted to contact CL to do something similar for our small jobs board which is targetted at the local market. I didn’t receive any contact other than being accused of wanting to spam their listings - listing which are already full of low quality jobs, or spurious home-based “opportunities”.