Craigslist debuts first official app after 11-year wait

The granddaddy of listing websites is finally getting with the times.

Craigslist, founded nearly a quarter century ago, has debuted its first mobile app, available for both iPhones and Android-powered devices.

Coming 11 years after the launch of Apple’s App Store, the new app mirrors the famously understated design of craigslist.com, and it appears to allow users to do all the same things. This includes — among many, many other things — the ability to browse and post listings for a range of housing accommodations, including apartments, rooms for rent, housing swaps and for-sale listings.

Many rental search startups have launched with the mission of peeling away Craigslist users. They have often touted functionality and listing quality that they say Craigslist doesn’t deliver. Yet Craigslist has endured. And these challengers? Well, some have not.

“Investors behind scraper/spammer startup Radpad enjoyed a juicy, well-deserved $60m ‘exit’ recently, as reported by the National Law Review,” Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster wrote on Craigslist’s blog in 2017.

Buckmaster was wryly referring to a $60.5 million judgment that Craigslist won against rental startup Radpad for violating anti-spam laws and craigslist’s terms of service in an alleged data-scraping scheme.

Showing that sparkly design isn’t always a top priority for some, the new app has received an average rating of 4.3 out of 5 stars from about 100 reviewers so far.

Email Teke Wiggin.