[mooxie]

I've done a lot of a relatively high-value item (motorcycles, cars) buying and selling on Facebook and Craigslist, and let me assure you: people didn't move to Facebook because Craigslist was a 'robust incumbent.'

As a seller, I am guaranteed to get 10-20 scam messages in the first 24h of my post on Craigslist; text, email, and phone. God forbid you were bold/stupid enough to put your real information in there. You have to use burners or congratulations, you've signed up for a lifetime of scam calls.

Facebook Marketplace has many faults, but it is relatively easy-to-use, has a wide audience, attracts more serious buyers in my experience, has low spam/scam volume, actually attempts to address scammers (albeit cumbersomely; this is still a differentiator from CL) and allows me to know something about who I am trying to make a deal with.

Marketplace is succeeding despite its faults precisely because the other options are generally such terrible experiences.

[zucked]

As a BUYER, the FB marketplace experience is TERRIBLE. Seriously, it's beyond bad. Searching for an item gives you different listings every. single. time. It's a dice roll if the faceted search works. And that's on top of the usual cruft of selling online - the requisite "is this available?" and ghosting being the most annoying. I'm a member of several B/S groups and half the content is split between posts and marketplace items and searching between them is obnoxious.

Full disclosure - I use the mobile web experience because I refuse to install the app. I would rather Craiglist 8 days a week, but because FB has the user already there, logged in, they've gained a lot of traction with a seriously inferior product.

[fuzzer37]

I wonder if this depends on the location. I've never run into that issue. Sure, a couple here and there. But nothing where I would ever consider needing a burner number or felt like I was getting scammed. Although I've only sold maybe 10-20 items, so maybe I'm just lucky.