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You may have seen ads about the new Facebook Marketplace feature. Essentially it lets you list your item and put it up for sale. I've not used it so I can't give you the specifics on how it works but news reports describe it as being either an online version of Craigslist or a stripped down version of eBay. I also don't have any information about fees (if any) that Facebook might charge or how payments between parties are being handled.

Does anyone on Dakka plan to use this feature? I can see people listing their old armies here to increase exposure instead of being limited to a small FB group or forum post like they currently are. If the fees are low enough, will they get your business over eBay? Or is this just another ham-fisted attempt to grab market share that will inevitably fail and fade away like Google + ?

I think it makes sense for stuff that's a PITA to ship. I sold some old GW cases over a FB group, so there's clearly something to the idea.

While I cannot comment on using it... I've seen numerous people, both on Dakka and elsewhere describing selling goods on Ebay nowadays as "painful"... From what I gather, Ebay has gone much more in favor of online retailers, not joe-schmoe holding what amounts to a garage sale.

Okay, I just played around with it on my iPhone and it's definitely structured more like Craigslist than eBay.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
While I cannot comment on using it... I've seen numerous people, both on Dakka and elsewhere describing selling goods on Ebay nowadays as "painful"... From what I gather, Ebay has gone much more in favor of online retailers, not joe-schmoe holding what amounts to a garage sale.

Yeah, I got out of eBay selling few years back. It wasn't anyone big thing, and it's still the best way to get the highest price, but even for used gaming stuff you're competing against small businesses that crush you with economy of scale. Unless you want to really put a lot man-hours into it, it's just not worth it.

Haven't used it, but I'm not surprised. They already have FB groups for this (wife is in one that's for baby/kid related stuff and is for mothers only)

I cannot fathom using Facebook itself as a marketplace (as opposed to the existing setups of largely using it as a meeting place and conducting the actual sale in person or through a different medium). Too many eggs in one basket there.

Also, at least in my experience, Facebool has hit something of a peak and a plateau, it is entering that game late and the demographic that would have used such a feature 10 years ago that pushed FB to its success is probably not the same people who would use such a feature.

I use a couple of FB selling groups, but they are localised in terms of theme and area, like my local gaming and camera clubs, as I'd rather not have to shop stuff. Works out pretty well all in.

That said, an open marketplace type set up sounds awful and I'd rather keep it to gumtree/ebay.

eBay is mostly small traders these days, but still the best place to sell gaming stuff if you just want rid of it.

As others have already noted, there's already plenty of Facebook buy/sell groups. My wife is active on a baby one, and I'm on one for Epic stuff, and another 40K one that I follow in case the right Necromunda stuff comes up.

Right now you make the deal, then have to organise payment and shipping through private mails and paypal. It makes sense to have facebook automate a bunch of those processes.

The advantage I can see facebook having in this would be in the organic creation of interest groups, both around certain kinds of products, and around certain geographic areas. Ebay will only have a section once it has been identified and set up by its admin team and it isn't ever really controlled by geography. On facebook any person can set up a trading group, that will succeed if there are enough likeminded people.

I haven't actually seen what facebook has set up, so I have no idea if they've actually built the service on their natural advantages.

It looks like Facebook isn't monotizing it the way eBay and Amazon do so this is just their version of Craigslist. To further prove that point, here is a quote from an article on MSN...

Of course, within a day of its release, Marketplace was bombarded with listings for sex, guns, marijuana, baby hedgehogs, and more.

Yep. Totally Craigslist.

More data/information for them to mine and monetize, no?