I feel confident few will disagree that Facebook Marketplace is the best part of Facebook. Its purpose is clear and useful. It’s not trying to radicalize anyone or start fights. It’s just a place to score a great deal on a used coffee table.
Mark Zuckerberg’s Marketplace is so successful at connecting people with vintage lamps that even Gen Z is sticking around Facebook just to use Marketplace.
I’ve bought and sold lots of stuff there — a rug, a patio table set, a matching set of pink armchairs (free!), an upcycled refurbished dresser. I love a bargain — and I feel virtuous about shopping sustainably when buying used.
However, there’s one part of this Xanadu of cheap sofas and bins of used Magna-Tiles that is a fly in the ointment. There’s one feature that is meant to help, but instead sows discord and chaos.
“Hi, is this available?”
When starting to communicate with a seller, you’re given a pre-written suggestion for a message to send: “Hi, is this available?”
In theory, this is useful — a way to start the conversation. (You don’t have to use this phrase. It’s possible to erase it and write something new, but most people will probably just click send with the pre-written message.)
Sellers HATE this. If you’ve ever sold anything on Marketplace, you may be familiar with what happens: You immediately get flooded with 10-plus messages from people all saying, “Hi, is this available?”
And half of them go silent after you reply. It can be hard to manage multiple potential buyers in a way that seems fair — you can do first come, first served, but if the first person stops replying, at what point do you move on to the next? Buyers can be flaky — sometimes, they’ll plan to pick something up and then never show. It can be frustrating!
And most frustrating, the question doesn’t even really make sense: Sellers can mark an item as “Pending” or “Sold.” So that already answers the question.
Something I see all the time — especially on expensive or bulky items that tend to sit around longer — is that sellers will add into their descriptions a plea to stop asking if an item is still available.
Like in these examples:
I notice these messages most often on the kinds of items that don’t move as quickly, either because they’re expensive or they’re large, like a couch or bed or something that would require a truck to transport.
Don’t worry, I have a solution!
There’s a fix for this buried deep, deep, deep in the Marketplace user settings. You can customize that default message so you won’t be sending the same old “Hi, is this available?” message that sellers are so sick of.
To edit the field to add a new custom message, go into Marketplace and click on the little person icon at the top corner.
Scroll all the way down to “Settings.”
And then “Set a custom message” at the bottom.
I recommend something that’s friendly but cuts to the chase about arranging the actual purchase.
I use: “Hi! I’m interested, when can you arrange pickup?”
If it’s a hot item with a lot of interest, a message like that will shoot you ahead of other would-be buyers.
Perfect use for AI
Meta’s ambitions for AI are much grander than solving a vague annoyance when trying to sell a used coffee table. But this does seem like a perfect use case for generative AI text — much more useful than the odd celebrity-avatar chatbots they launched in Messenger last year.
According to a recent Meta blog post about AI, they are testing AI on Marketplace, “to help people learn more about the products they’re considering buying and easily find related or alternative items.”
On Marketplace, there’s something nice and quaint about buying and selling used stuff from your neighbors.
Unlike screens and social media, it brings you in person with your community. I’ve had wonderful experiences on Marketplace: trading sleep tips from a fellow mom who was getting rid of the sleep sacks her baby no longer used, chatting with an older couple selling a patio chair.
Improbably, I met one of my closest mom friends when she came to pick up a printer I had put on our Buy Nothing group.
Making the communication between buyer and seller even better seems like one of the best use cases for generative AI. And connecting more people with more used chairs is a noble goal.
