Facebook announces new Craigslist-type selling feature

[doug2222usa]

Saw this blurb this morning:

Analyst William Power restates an Outperform rating and $155 price target on Facebook subsequent to the company's introduction of a new e-commerce product.

Power: "Combined with Messenger, Facebook is well positioned, in our view, to take a bite out of the e-commerce Marketplace market, and in turn, boost revenues from the lucrative retail/e-commerce market. While Facebook has been testing a version of marketplace functionality, and has a light classifieds tool live in Australia, today’s announcement is clearly a more concrete step towards competing in the market dominated by Amazon and eBay, and to a lesser extent by companies such as walmart.com, Jet and Rakuten."

I will have to look at Jet and Rakuten - never heard of them before, but I'm very keen on free ads, and lately Craigslist has gone in the ditch, IMHO, due to its ever-growing influx of, um, psychos.

No idea if Facebook's service will expand to real-time auctions or not.

[aethelwulf]

I will have to look at Jet and Rakuten - never heard of them before, but I'm very keen on free ads, and lately Craigslist has gone in the ditch, IMHO, due to its ever-growing influx of, um, psychos.

No idea if Facebook's service will expand to real-time auctions or not.

Rakuten is a Japanese website...there's probably zero English on it. They are quite insular after all. In Japan there is a sub-business to online retailing, that of re-mailing. Many Japanese online retailers won't ship outside Japan, so for a fee, you can have purchases sent to a company, who will re-mail the item to you outside Japan.

I've read quite a few times about bad experiences that come from Craigslist...it started out as a good idea, but seems to have been subsumed by wackos.

[doug2222usa]

I did in fact look at both Jet and Rakuten today, but not the least impressed with either one, plus they are of virtually no use whatsoever to stamp or coin collectors, being more fashion- or gizmo-oriented.

Thanks for revealing the hidden charges associated with Rakuten (the very word makes me think of rackets).

==========
Craigslist began to decline about 3 years ago. Most of its problems come from an utter lack of interest in policing itself and/or getting rid of predators.

[muruk]

EBay has become extremely cumbersome to use, and we badly need a workable alternative that people will actually migrate to.

In spite of its problems, eBay still has the business volume.

For many things I am now using item name plus "buy" on Google to look for actual sellers' websites for the stuff I need.

[aethelwulf]

For now,

1) only available in USA, UK, AU, NZ and
2) only on the mobile app, not website.

Facebook's announcement of this service,

Introducing Marketplace: Buy and Sell with Your Local Community

By Mary Ku, Director of Product Management

Facebook is where people connect, and in recent years more people have been using Facebook to connect in another way: buying and selling with each other. This activity started in Facebook Groups and has grown substantially. More than 450 million people visit buy and sell groups each month — from families in a local neighborhood to collectors around the world.

To help people make more of these connections, today we’re introducing Marketplace, a convenient destination to discover, buy and sell items with people in your community. Marketplace makes it easy to find new things you’ll love, and find a new home for the things you’re ready to part with. We’ll continue to build new options and features to make this the best experience for people.

Post Items for Sale in Just a Few Steps

Take a photo of your item, or add it from your camera roll
Enter a product name, description and price
Confirm your location and select a category
Post

Now in Four Countries, With More to Come

Over the next few days, Marketplace will be rolling out to everyone over 18 years old in the US, UK, Australia, and New Zealand on the Facebook app for iPhone and Android. We will continue expanding to additional countries and make Marketplace available on the desktop version of Facebook in the coming months.

http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2016/10/introducing-marketplace- ... community/

A review of the service,

Facebook Marketplace just opened to total and potentially illegal anarchy

By Cooper Fleishman, October 03, 2016

Wanna buy a gun? How about some weed? Just check Facebook.

The social network just launched Marketplace, its answer to Craigslist, for iOS and Android. Just hours into the launch, it's become a black market as chaotic and lawless as a Dark Net forum.

Facebook's commerce policy is clear about what's banned from online sales: weapons, drugs, alcohol, "adult items or services" and overly sexual ads, to name a few. It took just 10 minutes to spot listings for every policy-violating item. Here's a brief guide. (Some of this material may be NSFW.)

https://mic.com/articles/155734/facebook-marketplace-drugs-guns-sex-memes-anarchy?utm

[NSFW = Not Safe For Work; eg. don't browse such an article/images at your desk at work]

[doug2222usa]

That's called unintended consequences.

When the service becomes available for desktops, I'll take a look, as the concept almost BEGS for impulse purchases.

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By the way, it's legal to sell marijuana in several states now, but in some you need a license and a surety bond. It was discussed as a ballot initiative in Ohio, but I don't know how far that idea got.

I've been thinking about selling that other weed (catnip), as the quality in pet stores is awful, and, awfully expensive.

[MPSStampCollect]

I have considered trying to sell some of my surplus stamps locally on Facebook Marketplace. Does anyone have recent positive or negative experiences when trying to sell stamps & ect. on the service?