Comments on: When will we start paying for Facebook friends?

By: dj

dj — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 17:42:07 +0000

I agree it’s possible for Facebook to battle with eBay over reputation. Frankly, I’m surprised FB Marketplace hasn’t taken off more than we’ve seen thus far. Craigslist I suppose is pretty good for unloading a lot of things, and eBay can cover the rest. I would think FB can build a lead in selling textbooks online, then build out from that core strength to over items.

By: Matthew Maroon

Matthew Maroon — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 11:49:57 +0000

Facebook seems to be little trouble for eBay. The great thing about eBay is that when I list my iPod, hundreds of people will see it. I don’t have anywhere near as many Facebook friends as the number of people who viewed the nano I sold on eBay.

Auctions rely not just on the percent of potential customers interested in your product, but the absolute number as well. An auction with one bidder is a total waste. So a site with 100 bidders bidding for 100 ipods concurrently is way better for the seller than a site with 1 bidder bidding for 1 ipod. Of course a site with 10 and 10 is probably almost as good as the former, but most people’s buddy list won’t support that for most things they want to sell.

Also, reputation would appear to matter very little, given how close new items on eBay sell to their list price on Amazon, even when the seller has a mediocre feedback rating. The little extra trust can’t even come close to the huge marketplace. As a seller, I just don’t see the value of Facebook.

By: Ziomek

Ziomek — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 18:54:32 +0000

I think that’s just bullshit. Stop talking about FB as if it was something so great.

By: mikeb

mikeb — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 17:12:51 +0000

OK, I’ll offer a dissenting opinion.

Just because your friends like someone or something doesn’t mean that it will be the right choice to you. The key is to get recommendation that suits you and your situation. If you think that you can get those from your narrow circle of friends, you’re not being realistic. Social services offer a very narrow view (unless you have a ton of “friends” in which case those are not really your friends but your acquaintances).

As for Facebook replacing eBay’s rep, I don’t see it. Let’s think about the perils of it first. Let’s say you buy something from someone and you’re pissed off because you’re not happy with it. You demand your money back and you don’t get it. So, due to this bad deal you’ve just made an enemy that will badmouth you to all your friends on FB and will write on your wall/their walls all kinds of nonsense about you. Is that really useful?! It only takes one case of this and it can suck out all of the euphoria out of FB commerce. There’s a reason why you should never go into business with friends!

By: Matt

Matt — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 02:45:20 +0000

Sunil,

I agree that “buying friends” is just like subscribing to an analyst report service, with the caveat that you mentioned; the value-add is that you see what your (real) friends subscribe to. This point does overlap to a certain extent with my third point. Good observation.

By: Sunil Garg

Sunil Garg — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 22:19:33 +0000

I don’t quite understand the paradigm shift you’re claiming with a movement towards “buying friends” — using your example of stock picks, how is this any different from subscribing to an analyst report service? The value-add you speak of is in seeing what your (real) friends subscribe to, which would be covered by your third point of a social review system.

In terms of reputation, I believe the distinction between Facebook and eBay is that Facebook’s trust system is based off of your personal relationships, while eBay’s is based off of mostly anonymous transaction reviews. Facebook is already leveraging theirs with success on Facebook Marketplace. Watching them (or an app developer) extend that to incorporate some of eBay’s features will be interesting.