Facebook Marketplace

A job well done for the team Adhiraj Joshua, Xialin andReuben. It a brilliant idea to use video as a form of presentation, in my own opinion. If anyone need the url for the video it's here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvCKrwZ_ZC8

Marketplace.
Just want to highlight a few key pointers that the team has bought up.

1. The Shout out feature.
What I believe a shout out feature actually encourage users/buyers to share some personal information about the things they are looking at buying. With that friends could actually chip in their two cents for whatever classifieds item that they might be looking at. This might provide great insight for the user. An example, if you come across a classifieds listing for a digital camera, your “shout” could be something like “has anyone tried this brand?” Or your “shout” could be something as simple as “should I buy this?”

A nice thread of comments within your network of friend would slowly appear as a result of a single posting. It created a nice social graph for Facebook and Marketplace, why you would ask? It engage you and your friend more and that's what social network is all about and you would login more frequently. Secondly, it create a conversation around the classifieds item spreading and gaining a good amount of traction and attention either good or bad.

I would portability trust my friend insight on the item more then what is written on the description by the seller.

2. Advertising your ads
One of the feature mention by the team was that marketplace could help you advertise your ad by posting on friends feeds or wall. I would say there still a limit of what this advertisement could do. The worst case scenario from this kind of posting is that no one actually write a comment or re-post the ads. Plus it still limits the number of eye ball on the items or worst view as spamming ads to your friends wall.

On the other hand if your friends help you re post the by any means. It would actually add a lot of credibility for you and your items. The main advantage I would say that marketplace has over other stand alone site is that facebook is basically a CRM software using Social Network if you manage it well. You could retain and re-engage those customer that brought stuff from you.

3. Not able to make payments.
After reading more about Oodle I had a better understanding on marketplace. It a online free classifieds for people to use, and when you are talking about classifieds one can't run away from the giant success free classifieds like craigslist.org. I would guess that facebook is trying to create something similar to craigslist and craigslist is also powered by location basic search also. I believe we won't really get to see any form of payment through facebook's marketplace anytime soon. it doesn't make sense for them to do so.

Overall, I don't think marketplace would take off in Singapore. The culture here is a little different. In the US, it normally to see families selling off their furniture in front of their house. Most people over there would actually do that and what marketplace provide is the ability to post such deals. With it location base search, all items that you search are within the each states and you pick up the item and save a lot on transportation. There's no middle man taking a percent of what you sell.

Credit or Debit card payment?

If anyone is interested in payment, this article is quite interested if you want to understand why there's two form of payment? Credit and Debit and why is one better then the other.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/05/your-money/credit-and-debit-cards/05visa.html

Someone once told me before (no idea if it true), the Credit card system are form by company who give out loan and Debit system are those offer by the bank. Therefore credit seem to be pro-consumer in some way or another. Read up the article.