My wife has been buying and selling things on individual Facebook groups for years before this official marketplace.
Selling on Facebook is hands down a vastly better experience than selling things on Craigslist in every way - especially if you live in a market that is too small for a designated Craigslist area.
Our real world experience:
1) Hyperlocal - Our city of 40k-50k is 40 miles from the nearest Craigslist area (OKC). Facebook groups and now the marketplace ensures we don't have to drive 30 minutes or more to meet someone. Most people buy things that are either very close to them (i.e. already in the same city), or are more willing to drive to where you are.
2) Related to (1) - Since it is more local (we usually meet at a Walgreens or supermarket parking lot that is only a few blocks away), we can easily sell more items that are lower in value (like kids clothing, etc.). This is something that just isn't worth the hassle on Craigslist.
3) Way fewer scammers and spammers since you have to use your real name.
4) You know who you are meeting and what they look like (again - real name, single account requirement).
5) Built-in messaging allows you an easier way to communicate meeting details privately without having to give your phone number or email address.
6) You can easily block and report people who are problematic and they will never see your posts or be able to buy your stuff or message you again.
In short, Facebook has allowed us to sell a lot of things on a much more regular basis than Craigslist ever would, with much less hassle and spam/scammers.
True of most transactions I'd think. You meet in person, they can see your license plate. Communicate via text, they have your number. Selling something larger than can fit in your car? They come to your house. Many people won't buy something of any real value without some degree of accountability.
I think the surface area of a world where transactions are 100% anonymous is quite small.
But they seem to show your full name and public Facebook picture, which opens you up to all kinds of potential real-world harassment that doesn't exist on the (if you're smart) fully anonymous Craigslist. Such as showing up to your workplace to demand their money back, or finding your contact information via a Google search.
Very true, but couldn't you say that about any p2p marketplace/selling website (like Craigslist)? If someone's the harass-y type, I doubt they'd be bound by platform
They sure are bound by the amount of information you give them.
On Facebook they tend to have your picture, full legal name, social circles, place of work and where you live from the start.
I know plenty of people who use online markets pseudonomously (and also break fb policy on that), and meet in public places for the money/item exchange. It's normal here to only share first names in a trade.
> 5) Built-in messaging allows you an easier way to communicate meeting details privately without having to give your phone number or email address.
Your notion of "private" is a little strange. Facebook offers the illusion of private transactions by effectively robbing everyone of their privacy - in other words, that is how they established themselves as the pre-eminent and now possibly only two sided marketplace for the "common folks". This is like thanking the local thugs for keeping peace in the streets so that people can go about their local commerce in a peaceful way.
Contrast this to all the other things we actually consider private: face to face meetings, phone conversations (ok, not so much anymore), sending physical letters (again...), etc. where there is, or used to be, a somewhat reasonable expectation that the conduit facilitating your private interaction was not gathering all that information to be packaged off to the highest bidder.
Also, just wait until one day your customer realizes he/she is being targeted with ads based on stuff they bought from you and from someone else, which when combined exposes them in some way they would rather not have been. You just might wish you were merely dealing with the "spammers and scammers" instead, in which case there is usually at least the possibility of recourse.
Yes, all my criticisms can be directed at internet commerce in general. It is only FB which has had a history of leaving a lot of things unsaid in a way which makes their users feel like idiots once people realize exactly why those things were left unsaid. For e.g., I bet no one actually asked FB if they are going to show ads on WhatsApp, instead choosing to believe and then applaud the WhatsApp founders for their stance on ads. On hindsight, people are now realizing that MZ never actually gave a shit what the WhatsApp founder said or did, and was only too happy to let everyone make complete fools of themselves.
I can pull out a story here which would tell people exactly what MZ thinks of his users in general, but unfortunately I am starting to now think that MZ was spot-on with his assessment.
Private here just means not out in the open, not absolutely private. This doesn't seem like a very "strange" way to use the word to me.
I think the OP does a good job of outlining why this is preferable to Craigslist for your run of the mill buying and selling, namely that buying from a known entity is generally preferable than buying from an unknown one.
Facebook makes a set of tradeoffs regarding privacy and monetization, and they seem to be very popular. You assign a lot of agency to Facebook for orchestrating all of this, when really they are just providing to what the market wants: a free (as in beer) social network.
The real conflict of interest i see is that FB ads will have a chance to convince you to buy something else whilst viewing the local item. Eg: I'm buying a used bicycle and local bike vendor puts up ads like "DONT BUY USED, NEW SCAM FLOODING THE USA" ...
I'm happy they are introducing it, but IMO the execution has been quite poor. Some random complaints as someone who uses it:
They added a tab to the facebook app that you can't remove. It's inconveniently placed between two tabs that most people do care about (newsfeed and notifications). Furthermore, I randomly get a red number over the marketplace, similar to the number shown for notifications. This is very frustrating to me and it never seems to go away. I've mistaken this little notification bubble for a legitimate notification multiple times, when it was actually just a new post in the marketplace that I don't care about.
The 'newsfeed' of marketplace is littered with complete crap. 50+% of it is fake shoes, fake purses, used womens clothing, and people looking to trade their piece of garbage cars for another one (sorry, I don't want to trade for your civic that is worth <1k)
Selling something was a pretty poor experience for me. I got a ton of messages from people who had no interest in what I was selling, and instead spammed me like crazy with stuff I didn't care about at all. For me this was more excusable on a platform like craigslist because it is easy enough to filter email, but there is no real way to filter FB messages. Now I have personal messages and spammers mixed together.
Overall I'm happy to see this become a thing, but IMO execution has been poor. Well, annoying at the least, but I assume that is their goal. Much better than the terrible interface of the buy/sell groups, especially with how broken Facebooks group search is (I often can't find posts that were posted within the past month or so in a group. I'm searching correct terms, they just aren't indexed.)
I am part of a bunch of secondary beer market groups (raffles and straight up sales) on Facebook, and it's a pretty terrible platform, but it has the user base :(
I used to buy/sell on Craigslist a lot but now use NextDoor (neighborhood-based, address-verified social network). I never had any safety issues with CL, but ND definitely feels safer/friendlier. Most of the people I meet are local housewives getting rid of stuff. There tends to be less haggling, and because it's neighborhood/town based, you don't have to drive as far to meet (huge plus). I think the reason that people behave better (e.g., don't lowball) is because they know they'll see you in discussion forums on the network, and it's not worth pissing someone off and getting a bad reputation.
I'll try out FB's new feature, but ND sets the bar pretty high.
Yeah but what I don't like about next door is that by default you're sharing your entire profile with your closest 16+ neighborhoods. That means your actual verified address, what you're selling, and anything else you put on nextdoor.
Why do these sites keep making privacy settings open to all by default?
That is the default, but you can also opt not to show your address, and to hide all but your name from anyone outside your neighborhood. It's definitely smart not to show the address — but even still it's wise to censor yourself (don't say "seeking housesitter for 10/1 to 10/14) because people can just google you and see where you live from public records. HN folks probably realize this, but many people on ND do not...
Also note that you can post to just your neighborhood, or to yours and a few close by. You don't have to share with all (and frequently, I don't).
I agree. There's a ton of spam and fake accounts in these types of Facebook groups which isn't a great experience and only marginally better than Craigslist.
Nextdoor is far better positioned to avoid this kind of spammy experience. They require real names and verify addresses so you know the people you are interacting with are real, and actually live near you.
FYI, their user verification is very weak. So while the vast majority of folks on the network actually live where they say they do, it is trivial for an outsider to join and lurk. People share all sorts of private details (when they'll be out of town being the most common), and I'm surprised there haven't been any (publicized) incidents where thieves used ND to find leads in ritzy neighborhoods.
I sold my old motorcycle in 2009 using FB Marketplace. Half the inquiries I got were from scammers, even then... Have they improved anything in that regard? I especially don't want people spamming my Facebook messages now that they're more intrusive.
Almost all of the inquiries on Craigslist are scams no matter what you are selling. I sold a motorcycle recently and the scams were plenty. I usually just ignore every call, text, and email in the first half hour because they are all from robots.
When I used craigslist before moving, I made sure contact was only made over email. It's a lot easier to use a temp email that a temp phone number.
It's funny how many people would email this: "Interested, pls txt 555-5555"
I ended up switching to Close5 and had a lot more luck with that - even near the end where I was just giving stuff away. For some reason people on craigslist were still way too picky about free stuff, one guy even asking if I would pay for it to be delivered.
With all of these services, I've found the biggest problem to be with people not knowing how to read. If you say firm price and pick up only, they'll still try to get you to deliver and go down in price.
I also see the opposite: I get texts asking me to email someone. If I email them I get some variant of a 419 scam. With the motorcycle it was "I'm on a secret mission in Afghanistan but I want to buy your motorcycle for my brother who lives in Chicago."
I've had marketplace on my phone for the past few months. I guess New Zealand was the test market for it.
Personally, I don't use it. Facebook provides no protection for either buyer or seller, which is something that Ebay (or Trademe [0] in the case of NZ) offer. I'm constantly seeing people on the local buy/sell/exchange groups complaining about buying stolen phones, or people failing to send items, or various other things.
It's not difficult to make a fake account. Although it does say how long the person has been a Facebook member on the listings.
I just looked on my phone, and the first thing I see for sale is synthetic marijuana. This doesn't bode well.
The user experience is pretty poor too. For a test, I wanted to see if I could find a couch. The closest I could filter to was Furniture. I then searched for Couch, which then removed the filter, so I added the filter back on. Instead of seeing a bunch of couches, half the things for sale were tables and beds.
I'm not a fan of the image-only listings either. I'd prefer to see a title with an image when searching. A price would be useful too. Instead I get a bunch of crappy cellphone pictures of peoples old shit.
Then there's the issue for me that you aren't allowed to buy and sell firearms through Facebook, despite the fact that it's perfectly legal in New Zealand, and Trademe allows you to do it.
I also had it in Chile since a couple of months back and it worked very well for me. Had an Android phone which I won at a raffle and managed to sell it in 2 days after I listed it at discounted price.
I don't know if its just me, judging by the ad's that facebook shows me 70% of them are not legit. Fake clothes, fake watches, scam companies etc.
How can I trust a service that will be not regulated at all, I mean its a nice idea, although I'd be very careful on what am looking in there. (At least ebay is a bit more regulated I'd say)
I'm part of a local Facebook community for trading and selling board games. You basically meet in a parking lot during the day and make the trade/purchase, and it's pretty hard to fake the components/packaging of a board game. Possible missing components is the biggest worry, since they're not likely to wait around as you count each component.
Also a lot of these people can be vouched for since someone tends to have dealt with each other at some point.
I've only made a couple of trades through it so far, but it seems to work well.
I should have mentioned it's technically a marketplace group. That being said, considering most people wanting to trade or sell games put up like 10 games at a time and make deals for individual games with individual sellers, the price feature is usually superfluous (sometimes they go $9,999,999 just because).
Given the local aspect of this I think it's more a craigslist killer than an ebay killer. And Craigslist is successful in part because it's not very regulated.
I think a lot of the success from facebook buy/sell groups is that the items will actually show up in people's newsfeeds once they have joined a regional/topic group for trading. This probably raises awareness of second hand items available in general. If the marketplace is going to be a separate part of facebook, It might not be as engaging.
I live in a geographically isolated area which is small enough to not get it's own Criagslist area, but big enough that there is a lot of 2nd hand selling and buying. This almost exclusively happens through a FB group. It seems like this is a good natural move for FB.
More services means more data for them to exploit. Weak on privacy guarantees = whatever services they offer are heavily mined for your data.
When it comes to sales, craigslist is useful because it allows you to remain anonymous. With FB, I seem to be exposing exactly who I am, where I live, what I have for sale. In places with high crime rates, this opens me up to becoming a victim, as perps can search this information, see my name (maybe search online for more details), etc. Craigslist has even worked with police departments to set up safe areas[0] for people to exchange items. Will FB prioritize these important aspects?
I just recently saw an advertisement for their rural internet initiative, launching 3kW large-wingspan aircraft over remote areas to transmit network signals[1]. On the surface it is a useful goal - to connect more people - but ultimately, FB wants to increase its membership, and enrich its supply of data collected by people. Do we really prioritize having people send likes on FB from their shantytowns[2] instead of helping them improve their own villages -- food, sanity[3], customs, etc.?
From [2]:
> Mr. Kohli, 17, said he spends about four hours a day on the Internet and uses an Express Wi-Fi plan to supplement his Airtel data plan.
> Facebook has no desire to enter directly into the Internet service business.
> An important cog in the system is the merchant in each village that sells the service. Facebook and AirJaldi decided that there should be just one authorized seller per village to give that person a strong incentive to sell as many subscriptions as possible.
If you are a seller of something, there is some upside to knowing who the buyer is. Seems less likely you'll just get held up at gunpoint if you have a link to their FB profile you could hand the police.
Okay, but you can already avoid this by doing the exchange in a police precinct - which you probably ought to do anyways, even with a Facebook account attached.
> link to their FB profile you could hand the police
Is this useful to police, when profiles can be forged?
Personally, when I sell something I don't want people to learn who I am. I'd rather just sell it and remain anonymous. There is more concern about the legality of a good from the buyer's perspective, not the seller.
Then you'll simply use Craigslist or a different platform for those items. There are tons more selling scenarios in my view where the non-anonymity is a comfort, not a hinderance.
They could (theoretically) request the IP addresses of the scam user. A small-scale local thief may well be using their computer without something like Tor.
>Do we really prioritize having people send likes on FB from their shantytowns[1] instead of helping them improve their own villages -- food, sanity[2], customs, etc.?
Who is "we"? There are many paths to "doing good". Of course FB will pick something that is mutually beneficial to the people and the company.
Semi-related: just last night I learned from a waitress that there is a thriving underground food marketplace on Facebook. Basically, if you live in a city with a large ethnic population, and you search in native languages, you can find housewives and hustlers selling lots of delicious looking things, sometimes offering delivery.
I wonder what effect the marketplace will have on black market biryani.
I was debating with a friend recently whether offerup.com or letgo.com would win this snap-and-post marketplace battle. I guess fb just rendered that discussion obsolete.
Offerup still remains a bit of a mystery. They have a unicorn valuation but when I go on there I am underwhelmed and they seem to have a lot of old listings. I am in their home market also which I think would be more used.
I just can't see either of these sites remaining relevant when fb takes over the market. I use both offerup and letgo, and each one works well in some geographies but not others. For example, lots of people post things to offerup in the DC area, but not to letgo. At the same time, I find lots of stuff on letgo in the Pennsylvania area. FB is going to use their network to overtake all geographies.
On that topic, I think fb tried to enter a number of market but wasn't always successful (looking around there's things like coupons / gifts / credits).
we recently released Townsourced.com as an alternative option to Craigslist and FB garage sales. In addition to buying and selling locally, users can post events, jobs, volunteer opportunities ect. Users create and moderate the communities. Users can also post to multiple communities simultaneously.
I use Facebook from the browser on a computer for better privacy (block ads, tracking cookies) and for a much better experience. There are many things that any browser enables by virtue of just being a browser that the app does not support (just two examples for now - copying a permalink to a post or comment in order to refer to it elsewhere, and Find in Page to look for specific text on the page). Additionally, the what Facebook displays and how it displays things vary a lot when comparing a desktop browser interface and the app.
The distraction issue is why I uninstalled it. I find myself having to "request desktop" version when I want to read messages on my phone rather than install the messenger app.
Nextdoor right (sic)? That is a pretty astute observation... I could totally see that happening considering how Nextdoor users have their physical addresses verified, etc.
Facebook's come under a lot of heat for refusing to moderate the buying and selling of firearms in Groups, often in violation of local laws[1]. Hopefully their moderation standards will be higher on Marketplace.
That is a terrible article with lots of emotional writing and nothing cited to support their claims. Selling firearms locally that does not cross state borders or to prohibited individuals is generally legal.
Yup, so long as you are following the local/state laws there is nothing wrong with using Facebook (IMO) to facilitate the meet up. No different than placing an ad in the newspaper to sell a gun and meeting the buyer somewhere.
This is exactly the opposite of my experience. FB has been extremely successful in shutting down any and all local firearms sales groups. It was the impetus behind my own decision to boycott Facebook permanently.
They shut down the NZ Hunting Facebook group, which had over 10,000 members because people were selling firearms on it (which is not in violation of New Zealand law).
What a waste of time. The activity will just move elsewhere.
Working towards requiring registration/background checks of private sales would actually accomplish what they want. Lobbying Facebook to disassociate themselves from the sales will accomplish little more than moving the sales off of Facebook.
And of course, given that there are tens of millions of unregistered firearms in the US, all a registration law would do is inconvenience people willing to comply with it, it wouldn't stop people looking to get a gun without registering it.
If you want universal background checks then let private sellers use the same system gun shops do. Paying $25-$50 per gun at a gun shop to do a transfer is cost prohibitive.
There is no reason a buyer shouldn't be able to go to the ATF website submit themselves for a BC and get an approval code for a seller to verify. That respects privacy and gets you closer to 100% background checks. No responsible gun owner wants to sell to a felon. Thats why a lot will only do private transactions with CCW permit holders.
Thank you for saying this. I wrote something similar to my state reps when the law for private sales passed here. It is onerous on those of us live rural where guns are needed but are considerably far from a licensed dealer.
I am co-moderator of a Donate your unused stuff group on FB. The amount of spam users get is unbelievable, and we've to weed out responses like every few hours. But the most disturbing fact is the harassment the women get on the group. As soon as some woman posts something, she's almost guaranteed to get nasty messages with disturbing content. And these are from verified users who've active FB profiles.
Unless FB weeds out the spammers and the harassing, this is just another way to make quick bucks for FB.
I wonder how they will compete with local sites.
In Sweden most people I know use blocket.se and in Norway they use finn.no and I guess most countries/locales have their own sites like this.
The challenge here, for Facebook team, is to make this tool great at the same time it does not disturb users. I wouldn't like too see photos of old stuff being sell on my timeline.
Usually, when a software evolve trying to do everything, at the end it does do nothing well. Let's see what'll happen here.
so basically a shpock (SHop in your POCKet) http://www.shpock.com clone - around since 2012, hugely successful in german speaking markets (10M+ Downloads).
By "~public" I mean stuff that isn't hidden selectively (like you need to be friends to read the feed). So they're just hidden behind a simple-login so facebook has all the data and you can't use a search-engine to search all sites. And everything on facebook is behind a login.
I've counted at least a dozen votes on this comment, from serious negative numbers, to positive, to zero and back to negative. I'm not bothered by that. What puzzles me though... is that for all of that sentiment apparently no one had anything to actually say in reply.
Facebook has Marketplace concept since many years.. But this feature looks like competition for apps like Close5 and LetGo. Which have been very popular recently.
Another case of "showing every shit available in an closed walled app" copying the Chinese social apps formula.
I can understand why Chinese apps did what they did, because of the isolation from the international services and being more accessible via mobile devices to the majority. But Facebook is an attack on the Internet.
My wife has been buying and selling things on individual Facebook groups for years before this official marketplace.
Selling on Facebook is hands down a vastly better experience than selling things on Craigslist in every way - especially if you live in a market that is too small for a designated Craigslist area.
Our real world experience:
1) Hyperlocal - Our city of 40k-50k is 40 miles from the nearest Craigslist area (OKC). Facebook groups and now the marketplace ensures we don't have to drive 30 minutes or more to meet someone. Most people buy things that are either very close to them (i.e. already in the same city), or are more willing to drive to where you are.
2) Related to (1) - Since it is more local (we usually meet at a Walgreens or supermarket parking lot that is only a few blocks away), we can easily sell more items that are lower in value (like kids clothing, etc.). This is something that just isn't worth the hassle on Craigslist.
3) Way fewer scammers and spammers since you have to use your real name.
4) You know who you are meeting and what they look like (again - real name, single account requirement).
5) Built-in messaging allows you an easier way to communicate meeting details privately without having to give your phone number or email address.
6) You can easily block and report people who are problematic and they will never see your posts or be able to buy your stuff or message you again.
In short, Facebook has allowed us to sell a lot of things on a much more regular basis than Craigslist ever would, with much less hassle and spam/scammers.