Hey everyone, thanks for all the support over the years, we're pretty excited about the next part. I might write more about Our Incredible Journey at some point if anyone's interested, let me know if there's anything that you all want to hear more about.
Hey Eric, I'm a Canadian living in the Greater Toronto Area who used PadMapper to find his last 2 places, including the one I am sitting in now.
Sad to see that Zumper isn't open to those outside the USA, hopefully that will change. I showed PadMapper to a number of friends and they loved it. Let us take advantage of this new platform too!
What a refreshing write up compared to the usual corporatespeak acquisition posts. You can tell this company operates differently than many and I hope they were rewarded financially for their innovation.
Really disappointed they removed all of advanced filtering features (commute time, neighborhoods hightlight, some others i don't remember) that made it the best app for apartment hunting
Sorry about that, I love those too, we just haven't had time to reimplement them yet. This was a ground-up rewrite to replace the old PHP app with a new Flask app, and we need to rethink how the features work. The old code was getting really long in the tooth, with 7 years of cruft baked in. If you or anyone else has any suggestions, please email them to me at [email protected].
I havnen't heard of PadMapper or Zumper but I clicked the link anyway to see if there'd be a fun "our incredible journey" type statement in there. It turns out is a thoughtful and well written piece with a bonus direct reference to "our incredible journey."
I'm really glad you liked it, in my delirium last night following swapping out the entire backend and hoping it didn't die a horrible death under load, it was hard to tell if the sentences were even grammatically correct.
Congrats. I used to be a big fan of Padmapper until recently and kept recommending it to my friends and family, but I've noticed that it has become a cess pool of scammers. When I encountered one of these scammers and reported them to Padmapper support, I was assured it would be dealt with. This was a month ago and the scammer's profiles are still active on the site (his newer profile still has listings: http://www.padlister.com/profile/show/469392). I emailed Eric directly about it too, but received no further response. I was pretty disappointed by the lack of action on their part and I ended up switching back to Craigslist for my latest apartment search.
Agh, I'm sorry for not following up, I've been hammered recently, and I've let some things slip as we've been working to transition things. Our anti-scam system works pretty well once the scammer gets a message, but we need to work more on our preemptive scammer banning. They're a crafty bunch, and it takes ongoing work to stay effective at fighting them.
One thing to note, though, is that when we ban them, they get hellbanned, so that it looks to them like they're still up, but their listings just don't show up on the map. If you (or they) go directly to their listing, you can still see it, with the theory that it'll make it harder for them to tell when they've been banned, and make it slower for them to repost. That user you posted was, in fact, already hellbanned.
Also, you can always hit Flag as Bad on the desktop website to report a scam.
That's a good point that it's not very satisfying to report a scam and then have no visual indication that it was taken down, though.
If you're willing to give us another chance and try us out again, and you encounter any scams, please send them along to [email protected]. We've got a full time customer service person now!
Congrats Eric! You built an something amazing with very little capital investment, and that's always commendable. You're going to bring immense value to the Zumper team.
You're too kind, and it wasn't just me, I had a lot of help from a large cast (see the Oscar speech section). Rob and I are definitely going to try to help!
Congratulations on the acquisition! As a fellow small company I feel like it's one (of many) fantasies to join a larger team and continue working on your product.
A variety of ways, but the major way is that big apartment complexes are willing to pay for leases you generate, because it's expensive to have units lie vacant. A lot of big sites list those paid listings exclusively, in order to maximize revenue generated, whereas we try to include every vacancy we can. We think that in the very long run, ours is the winning approach.
IMO Zumper has a shitter user experience than PadMapper.. also Zumper hosts a third of PadMapper's growth..kinda makes you wonder how companies are successful today... seems like making money is more important than a better product or more growth
Thanks very much. I'm guessing the reason you don't see more open posts is that most acquired companies probably don't have the luxury of writing exactly what they want to - Zumper gave me pretty much free reign, they didn't even have suggested edits when I showed them a draft. I think if I submitted this post to BigCo's PR department, it would have come back thoroughly lobotomized. Bodes well for the future of PadMapper, I think.
If there's any part you'd like to hear more about, let me know!
[+] [-] ericd|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DKnoll|10 years ago|reply
Sad to see that Zumper isn't open to those outside the USA, hopefully that will change. I showed PadMapper to a number of friends and they loved it. Let us take advantage of this new platform too!
[+] [-] samstave|10 years ago|reply
Just finished reading you OIJ post! One of the best ones i've read. Thanks for sharing all that info.
[+] [-] pboutros|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thecosas|10 years ago|reply
It sounds like you guys found a good home! Keep at it!
[+] [-] jsnk|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] randall|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] colinbartlett|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ericd|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hmillison|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ericd|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dopamean|10 years ago|reply
Nicely done and congrats on the acquisition.
[+] [-] ericd|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gs7|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ericd|10 years ago|reply
One thing to note, though, is that when we ban them, they get hellbanned, so that it looks to them like they're still up, but their listings just don't show up on the map. If you (or they) go directly to their listing, you can still see it, with the theory that it'll make it harder for them to tell when they've been banned, and make it slower for them to repost. That user you posted was, in fact, already hellbanned.
Also, you can always hit Flag as Bad on the desktop website to report a scam.
That's a good point that it's not very satisfying to report a scam and then have no visual indication that it was taken down, though.
If you're willing to give us another chance and try us out again, and you encounter any scams, please send them along to [email protected]. We've got a full time customer service person now!
[+] [-] derwiki|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ericd|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jpmattia|10 years ago|reply
I note that 3 full-timers managing a 100M-sessions site would be another interesting writeup. Hint hint, nudge nudge.
[+] [-] ericd|10 years ago|reply
On the technical side, big multicore Xeons and SSDs have made it possible to run a veritable server farm in only a few physical machines recently.
[+] [-] conesus|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ericd|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rcarrigan87|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ericd|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simonw|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ericd|10 years ago|reply
We're coming to the Python world finally, after bouncing between PHP and Ruby.
And belated congrats to you too!
[+] [-] hamhamed|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ztratar|10 years ago|reply
Everything else is a function to generate profit.
[+] [-] edkennedy|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ericd|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rlander|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ericd|10 years ago|reply
If there's any part you'd like to hear more about, let me know!
[+] [-] floopidydoopidy|10 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] danielfriedman|10 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] ericd|10 years ago|reply