3 ms·

I did not expect Marketplace to take off and now it's a must-check before Craigslist.

by johnmaguire2013 7y ago

martin_a 7y ago
Seriously? From what I see in the German version of Facebook, Marketplace is nowhere near "eBay Kleinanzeigen" which is by far the most popular website for things like that. Actually Marketplace is even lower in quality and if you've ever used eBay Kleinanzeigen you know that it's hard to get under that level.
- djohnston 7y ago
  seriously, it's huge over here.
  - martin_a 7y ago
    Wow. Maybe I should have another look at it, thanks for the information.
magduf 7y ago
Not only that, but as much as I like to bad-mount FB, I will say that when I post stuff on FB Marketplace to sell, I never get people saying they want to buy it from me with a cashier's check. There are a lot of flakes, however, but that's the case with CL as well, but I've never run across a scammer, whereas on CL I get scammers all the time with the stupid cashier's check scam.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  This is totally regional and item category specific. Anything primarily bought sold by the people that write "I check email once a week and don't text so call me" in their CL ads is not going to be on marketplace.
  - magduf 7y ago
    I don't follow. I can post the exact same listing on FBM and CL, and with CL I get bombarded with scammers, and with FBM I never do. In fact, with FB, I'm not sure how you would ever get contacted by scammers at all, since it's tied to your FB account, so someone would have to go to the trouble of maintaining a fake FB account just for this purpose, and it would presumably be quickly flagged and disabled as soon as a couple people got obvious scam communications from it. For better or worse, the "real person" feature about FB and lack of privacy, actually seems to work in its favor here. Anyone with a phone (or who can spoof a phone number in your area code from Nigeria) can contact you on a CL listing, whereas with FB the bar is much, much higher and there's a lot more policing.

I did not expect Marketplace to take off and now it's a must-check before Craigslist.

Seriously? From what I see in the German version of Facebook, Marketplace is nowhere near "eBay Kleinanzeigen" which is by far the most popular website for things like that. Actually Marketplace is even lower in quality and if you've ever used eBay Kleinanzeigen you know that it's hard to get under that level.

djohnston 7y ago
seriously, it's huge over here.
- martin_a 7y ago
  Wow. Maybe I should have another look at it, thanks for the information.

magduf 7y ago

Not only that, but as much as I like to bad-mount FB, I will say that when I post stuff on FB Marketplace to sell, I never get people saying they want to buy it from me with a cashier's check. There are a lot of flakes, however, but that's the case with CL as well, but I've never run across a scammer, whereas on CL I get scammers all the time with the stupid cashier's check scam.

dsfyu404ed 7y ago
This is totally regional and item category specific. Anything primarily bought sold by the people that write "I check email once a week and don't text so call me" in their CL ads is not going to be on marketplace.
- magduf 7y ago
  I don't follow. I can post the exact same listing on FBM and CL, and with CL I get bombarded with scammers, and with FBM I never do. In fact, with FB, I'm not sure how you would ever get contacted by scammers at all, since it's tied to your FB account, so someone would have to go to the trouble of maintaining a fake FB account just for this purpose, and it would presumably be quickly flagged and disabled as soon as a couple people got obvious scam communications from it. For better or worse, the "real person" feature about FB and lack of privacy, actually seems to work in its favor here. Anyone with a phone (or who can spoof a phone number in your area code from Nigeria) can contact you on a CL listing, whereas with FB the bar is much, much higher and there's a lot more policing.