Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook Marketplace is keeping young people on the platform

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 67 posts

Re: Facebook Marketplace is keeping young people on the platform

#12

Post by bsder »

dmitrygr wrote: post #6
Freedom2 wrote: post #5

Genuine q, what makes FB marketplace good, and how did it blow up over Ebay / Craigslist? Is it a combination of having the platform with the most people as well as being the most likely platform to have people who are situated near you?

eBay charges taxes and takes a cut of the sale price. They report your income to the IRS too. Facebook marketplace allows people to meet up and exchange things for cash. No fees. No taxes. And it’s much harder to scam someone in person. Seemingly, craigslist should allow for this as well. Unfortunately for craigslist, however, it has been societally labeled as “for the olds”

Craigslist also became a cesspool of wasted time.

"No, I'm not going to accept 1% of what I listed. I'm going to put it in the garbage instead since my time is now worth more. In fact, I've now had enough of you assholes call and lowball me that I'm now net negative even at what I listed so into the trash it goes."

Presumably, Facebook Marketplace simply hasn't gone through the degradation cycle, yet.

Re: Facebook Marketplace is keeping young people on the platform

#13

Post by [deleted] »

dmitrygr wrote: post #6
Freedom2 wrote: post #5

Genuine q, what makes FB marketplace good, and how did it blow up over Ebay / Craigslist? Is it a combination of having the platform with the most people as well as being the most likely platform to have people who are situated near you?

eBay charges taxes and takes a cut of the sale price. They report your income to the IRS too. Facebook marketplace allows people to meet up and exchange things for cash. No fees. No taxes. And it’s much harder to scam someone in person. Seemingly, craigslist should allow for this as well. Unfortunately for craigslist, however, it has been societally labeled as “for the olds”

[deleted]

Re: Facebook Marketplace is keeping young people on the platform

#14

Post by dontTREATonme »

dmitrygr wrote: post #6
Freedom2 wrote: post #5

Genuine q, what makes FB marketplace good, and how did it blow up over Ebay / Craigslist? Is it a combination of having the platform with the most people as well as being the most likely platform to have people who are situated near you?

eBay charges taxes and takes a cut of the sale price. They report your income to the IRS too. Facebook marketplace allows people to meet up and exchange things for cash. No fees. No taxes. And it’s much harder to scam someone in person. Seemingly, craigslist should allow for this as well. Unfortunately for craigslist, however, it has been societally labeled as “for the olds”

The Facebook marketplace scam is two fold: On the buyer side: Facebook does allow shipping and they have none of the (admittedly poor) seller protections that eBay has, so buyers will use hacked cashapp/venmo/paypal accounts, to “buy” something only for the money to be clawed back a few days later once the item has already shipped. On the seller side you have sellers that charge a deposit upfront to “reserve” the item but then ghost you, and bec the transaction is happening outside of Facebook the buyer has no recourse, you can try to get facebook to delete the account but it’s super easy to create a new one. As long as people are aware of these scams and just ignore them they can have a fairly good experience. Though I have found fbm buyers try to negotiate a lot more no matter how cheap you make the item. You’re honestly better off setting a high price and letting ppl try to negotiate you down to what you’re comfortable selling at bec everyone wants a “deal”. This means that there needs to be room for that in the price. So some things just are hard to sell if the new cost is fairly low already.

Re: Facebook Marketplace is keeping young people on the platform

#16

Post by _puk »

I thought FB marketplace had peaked already, especially for furniture.

18 months ago you could find stuff on there fairly easily, now it's full of "must go" or "Free" items that are "message me for pricelist" when you click through. It ends up being a real slog to find anything.

Re: Facebook Marketplace is keeping young people on the platform

#19

Post by anshumankmr »

ErigmolCt wrote: post #8

But I wonder how long it'll stay fee-free. Meta isn't known for leaving money on the table forever

It sort of requires payment... I (am still) trying to sell a cycle on it...The leads I got didn't materialize (only three-four interested, apart from that two scammers). This is out of thousands of views, and good quality pictures and my cycle is in great shape for being about three years old with only minor paintwork scratches. FB was asking for money to boost the ad for it to even have a chance of being sold.

I got a better result on OLX, though it remains unsold.

Speaking of which anyone near or around Indiranagar, Bangalore who is looking for a dirt cheap 21 speed MTB... please DM :)

Re: Facebook Marketplace is keeping young people on the platform

#20

Post by bloomingkales »

ErigmolCt wrote: post #8

But I wonder how long it'll stay fee-free. Meta isn't known for leaving money on the table forever

I’ll monetize it right now, any c-level exec can get their promo right here, right now, at Meta:

- Sell an AI agent that sells and markets the item for the user on the marketplace, and manages the sale.

- Then have people sell their fucking houses on it.

- Tell Zuckerberg what you have achieved

- Have Zuckerberg express to Rogan on the show who will then express it to Elon on another show

- Watch Elon buy Zillow

- Live a life of riches, while Elon juggles Twitter, Zillow and the bankrupt car company.

There.

Post reply on HN