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Facebook Marketplace is keeping young people on the platform

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Re: Facebook Marketplace is keeping young people on the platform

#51

I'm from Austria and until recently I didn't even know that FB Marketplace was a thing. Never used it in my life. We have a great local website ( https://willhaben.at ) that everyone uses. I guess it's the Austrian version of Craigslist.

Lots of countries have settled on a local marketplace before FB arrived. E.g. in New Zealand, https://www.trademe.co.nz/ is too big to be displaced.

First mover advantage, nimbleness, and filters appropriate to regional differences (e.g. in Switzerland, translating easily between the different langages and filtering by canton) make such website stay ahead of the FB juggernaut.

Re: Facebook Marketplace is keeping young people on the platform

#52
post #30

And yet it is so underdeveloped. I'm in a few second hand board groups where every listing is like 20 different games at different prices. They have to put a price, so some people put 0, some put $30 and some put $999,999. I hate buying stuff on marketplace, it's so feature poor.

That sounds like the seller doing stupid things though. Beyond some text parsing and suggesting splitting the listings, what can marketplace do here? (or allowing to report incorrect listing)

"the seller doing stupid things"?

Every single person selling second hand board games is in this position. No one is setting up a single listing for each game. And this is hardly unique to board games.

>what can marketplace do here?

Obviously, allow an option to indicate that a listing consists of different items with different prices, and to specify a range. "40 second hand games, $30-80", it's not complicated.

Re: Facebook Marketplace is keeping young people on the platform

#53

I'm from Austria and until recently I didn't even know that FB Marketplace was a thing. Never used it in my life. We have a great local website ( https://willhaben.at ) that everyone uses. I guess it's the Austrian version of Craigslist.

Same in Finland, we have a few local options (one of which was bought by a massive Nordic conglomerate) that were established well before FB Marketplace became a thing.

One of them even has an escrow system where the money stays in escrow until the delivery is confirmed as being correct, the money will also be released if the recipient never fetches the parcel.

FB Marketplace is just scams wall to wall, reporting does nothing. The only way to do business in via FBM is face to face and verify the item.

Usually local FB for sale groups are better quality and actually moderated, which marketplace isn't.

Re: Facebook Marketplace is keeping young people on the platform

#55

i always find it funny how ppl shit on facebook as if any other social media site was orders of magnitude better. facebook is as shitty as you make it to be. follow shit reel creators and it will be shit. get into shit awful groups and it will be shit.

Follow all your friends and family and the algorithm will decide that you don't actually want to see their recent posts

Re: Facebook Marketplace is keeping young people on the platform

#56
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like the seller doing stupid things though. Beyond some text parsing and suggesting splitting the listings, what can marketplace do here? (or allowing to report incorrect listing)

"the seller doing stupid things"? Every single person selling second hand board games is in this position. No one is setting up a single listing for each game. And this is hardly unique to board games. >what can marketplace do here? Obviously, allow an option to indicate that a listing consists of different items with different prices, and to specify a range. "40 second hand games, $30-80", it's not complicated.

I've just seen a post like that and... interacting with multiple people about different items on the same market entry would be in top 10 worst experiences of my life. I really find it weird not to post them separately.

Re: Facebook Marketplace is keeping young people on the platform

#57
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"the seller doing stupid things"? Every single person selling second hand board games is in this position. No one is setting up a single listing for each game. And this is hardly unique to board games. >what can marketplace do here? Obviously, allow an option to indicate that a listing consists of different items with different prices, and to specify a range. "40 second hand games, $30-80", it's not complicated.

I've just seen a post like that and... interacting with multiple people about different items on the same market entry would be in top 10 worst experiences of my life. I really find it weird not to post them separately.

Seems to work just fine. Typically they post a photo of the whole collection, and a text list of the items and prices, which they update as things sell. They're usually wanting to sell more than one game to each buyer, so it's much easier to coordinate in a single listing.

Re: Facebook Marketplace is keeping young people on the platform

#58
post #55

i always find it funny how ppl shit on facebook as if any other social media site was orders of magnitude better. facebook is as shitty as you make it to be. follow shit reel creators and it will be shit. get into shit awful groups and it will be shit.

Follow all your friends and family and the algorithm will decide that you don't actually want to see their recent posts

go to the feeds tab, it's all there

Re: Facebook Marketplace is keeping young people on the platform

#59
To me the reason people use FB market is because of the lack of friction. you already have an account and probably already have the app. just snap a picture tell it what it is and how much and you're done. don't have to sign up for anything, or wait for confirmation emails. (I think this also tends to be the case for their dating services)

They also from what I can see do more aggressive searching on the content of images. I was once looking for a slot machine. and it found me a listing that did not mention a slot machine in the title or description (I think they were both blank somehow actually) but there was one in the picture.

It also does a lot more suggesting than craigslist or ebay for example. Not just reminding you of things you already saw. but thats FB being able to scrape all your data and know everything you want of course.

Re: Facebook Marketplace is keeping young people on the platform

#60
post #24

My FB account exists almost solely for marketplace, which has almost total market dominance for local classifieds where I live in Australia. Recently they’ve stopped letting you send messages to sellers via the website on your phone and insist that you use the app instead. It’s probably one of the few hooks they have left to try and get people on to the platform.

if you use chrome/firefox you can still “request desktop site” and get messenger working without the app.
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