Non-rhetoric question - why would one need a feed on craigslist? I've ever used craigslist only in two ways: 1) trying to sell something (about 20% success rate) 2) trying to buy something for cheap. In both cases, RSS feed serves to useful function - as a seller, I only need to publish one post, as a buyer, I need to find who sells cheap used bikes, call/email them and be done with it, I'm not going to monitor cheap used bike market for years to come.
Is there some important craigslist use case I am missing here?
If you're looking to buy something locally, you could subscribe to an RSS feed of the search results. If an item became available, it would appear in your feed.
I've used craigslist many times to (a) find an apartment to rent or (b) find a used car to buy. In both cases I was prepared to wait a month or perhaps more until what I wanted came along. Who wants to spend a month clicking reload on a webpage every half hour?
I also used to watch a feed of all the used stuff for sale within 20 miles of me (I'm in a remote area), with a bunch of filters to remove stuff I didn't care about. Quite often I came across bargains on stuff I wasn't actively looking for. Like unique handmade high-quality furniture.
The usage mode for buying on craigslist is nothing like the usage mode for buying on amazon. It is not instant gratification.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24840310