[HN Gopher] The history of Facebook Marketplace
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The history of Facebook Marketplace
Author : yarapavan
Score : 26 points
Date : 2022-01-23 10:04 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.lennysnewsletter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.lennysnewsletter.com)
| bruceb wrote:
| There are a few things that FB marketplace has going for it but
| #1 is the integration with messenger. The near friction-less
| ability for buyers to contact sellers and get a reply. This story
| is more about Craiglist doing nothing than FB innovation.
|
| If Craigslist enabled chat it would clawback lost ground. But
| they seem to be ok with losing half their marketshare or more. it
| is sad.
| danielecook wrote:
| I have used fb marketplace and it's been great for buying and
| selling locally. But of course the default listing is polluted
| with a bunch of irrelevant crap from companies and very low
| quality ads. I haven't found a way to set the default to local
| and for pickup only. The only thing I'm interested in is person
| to person transactions.
| sgarman wrote:
| 100% agree. Been trying to keep my eye out for retro game stuff
| and other tech things and you have to reset local pickup only
| after every search. The delivery ones are almost always scams
| or trash. I'm back to CL only now. Ebay is not so bad but
| prices are really over bid for everything.
| Hokusai wrote:
| What you want is not very relevant for Facebook, potential for
| growth is the only thing that matters. And that is a shame,
| because I see what you propose as a great service.
| altdataseller wrote:
| As someone who doesn't want to use FB, are there any good
| alternatives to FB marketplace besides ebay?
| sam1r wrote:
| I think it really depends on your location. Craigslist is super
| hot in Dallas.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| Craigslist though i prefer fb marketplace. Not sure why.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Recommend putting a note in every Craigslist post like "No
| verification code scams". Because if your phone number is
| included scammers will eagerly text asking for Google Voice
| verification code, claiming they need it to prove you're
| legit. Yet they'll actually use it to open a GV account and
| possibly take over your phone number.
| Gualdrapo wrote:
| Don't know there, but here in Latin America OLX and
| Mercadolibre are popular. The first is hugely based on trust
| (though their web experience is poor) as Facebook's
| Marketplace, and the latter has positioned by an aggresive SEO
| and marketing campaing, charging immense fees - but relatively
| secure for the buyer.
| auntienomen wrote:
| Craigslist. It's simple and better. Last time I tried Facebook,
| they immediately started up selling me on advertising.
| zyang wrote:
| Nextdoor is a good alternative but highly location dependent.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| You'll laugh, but newspaper classifieds. They are usually
| pretty cheap, and the people into buying used crap are still
| looking at classifieds for estate sales, etc.
|
| Because you pay to list, the fraud is mostly nonexistent.
| Conversions are really high, about 60% of our church bazaar's
| online sales came through the local paper. But the type of
| products and audiences would probably vary greatly... mom swaps
| would probably not do well.
|
| The other thing is consignment. There's a little industry of
| kid consignment sales where you can basically sell great
| condition kid clothes for 60-80% of retail, and get decent
| prices for toys, etc. Similar events exist for other categories
| too.
| rootsudo wrote:
| Swappa, if you want to deal with their support team (I don't
| like them, lots of requests to get them to do one thing.),
| mecari (same fees as ebay, no difference imo.)
|
| So unfortunately, not really.
| toss1 wrote:
| I've been getting good results on Craigslist, which can now
| search a radius of 250 miles and also 3rd party sites allow
| national searches. I was afraid that FB would gut it, but it
| now seems like FB actually just skimmed the less serious
| posters.
|
| For industrial stuff, there seems to be multitudes of used
| equipment sites, but no dominant one, so it's just a big
| scavenger hunt. There's a few attempts at sites aggregating
| listings, but they're all lame, IMO.
| fairity wrote:
| Does anyone know the author's source is for determining various
| marketplaces' monthly active users?
|
| I doubt that Facebook has exceeded Craigslist in overall
| marketplace activity in the US. Perhaps it's exceeded Craigslist
| on a world-wise basis but that's because Craigslist's user base
| is primarily North American-based.
| turkeytail wrote:
| I have found recently Facebook Marketplace has had a much larger
| selection compared to craigslist.
| ec109685 wrote:
| Back when Facebook was more open with their Social Graph, it was
| possible for companies like AirBnB and Uber to create
| marketplaces that had the same access to the social proof that
| the person you were interacting with was legit.
|
| Now, it's not possible to build a competing marketplace with
| those mechanics given FB keeps the data siloed.
| amriksohata wrote:
| I stopped using it when I realised all the stuff im along was
| being put on my feed to friends. Did they change this?
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(page generated 2022-01-23 23:02 UTC)