Marketplace For Facebook and Oodle iPhone App Launches, Has Room to Improve

Yesterday, Oodle released an iPhone app interface that connects users to Oodle Marketplace, as well as the Oodle-powered Facebook Marketplace. Called “Marketplace for Oodle & Facebook”, the app lets users quickly make “for sale”, “wanted”, and "free" posts; view listings by friends and friends of friends; and browse items listed nearby. Upon release, app had some performance issues, with some tabs frequently failing to load, and photos added to postings not always showing up in listings. Facebook originally launched Marketplace as an in-house app in 2007, but it never saw high volumes of postings. In hopes of revitalizing this social competitor to Craigslist, Facebook transferred control to partner Oodle in March of 2009. Marketplace still isn't huge. For instance, there are currently around 2000 general items on sale within 50 miles of San Francisco, one of its most active markets. Oodle hopes to grow Facebook Marketplace as well as their own Oodle Marketplace through the iPhone app. Once users of the app log in to Facebook and allow it to use their location, they’ll see the Marketplace home screen. From there they can add a new posting, view their existing postings, see counts of how many items are listed by friends and friends of friends, and see two recent postings from their network. Posting categories include offering and seeking items for sale, real estate, apartments and rentals, vehicles, and jobs. Marketplace’s best feature is how quickly you can design a listing. Setting a title, price, and description is simple, and it’s very handy to be able to take a photo on the spot to be used in your posting. It can be quite fun to wander around your home snapping photos and making listings of things you want to get rid of. Actually posting something is where problems started. It can take between 25 minutes and few hours for posts to finish processing, until which you can’t edit or delete your post. In some cases the photo you upload alongside a posting won’t show up in listings. Also, the app frequently returned a “Network Error” when attempting to browse to a different tab like “[postings by]Friends of Friends”, though a representative from Oodle says they are addressing this. Searching for postings is straightforward, but the smallest proximity you can refine your search to is 5 miles, which isn’t very helpful in metropolitan areas. Sharing to Facebook is easy but leaves out price, the inclusion of which can be important for drawing clicks to common but heavily discounted items. Marketplace for Oodle & Facebook may grow those marketplaces a little, but with flawed launch and no truly innovative features, it won’t generate the buzz necessary to make people stop using Craigslist or eBay.

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Marketplace For Facebook and Oodle iPhone App Launches, Has Room to Improve

Josh Constine

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