CraigsList

[Popularity perpetuation (category)]

It is so ugly and anemic and feature-poor, it is a wonder that anyone can stand to use it. And yet, inexplicably, it is very popular. Probably because it's free and has little good competition (?) in the free classifieds market. Yet another example of popularity being perpetuated. Its very popularity (high number of potential buyers) is probably the very thing that helps sustain its popularity.

The comments feature of YouTube

Two problems with it make it hard for me to believe that so many people bother to comment on YouTube videos:

• Your comment will only be visible on the first page of comments for days or maybe hours, depending on how many others are commenting. So the chances that anyone will ever read it become slim indeed once it is bumped off of the first page.
• It severely limits the length of your comments. So people have to split their comments into 2 or more posts.

Of course, I guess we could explain the popularity of the comments feature simply by the sheer popularity of YouTube itself and the many many people using it. So naturally, even if a small percentage of those users posted a comment, that would still translate into a large raw number of comments/comment posters.