There was a great deal of excitement when Ebay first came onto the scene and provided a platform for mass online buying and selling. It opened up the second hand trading market to a truly global scale and started a whole new breed of amateur online shop keeper, who later went on to start trading new items as well. Ebay is still going strong but now with the rise in social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, the online trading markets are stronger than ever.
Facebook first saw the potential in allowing people to advertise items on their site a very short time after they launched. Their ‘marketplace’ quickly became an active community in itself and people even started setting up shops here, in the same way as you might do on Ebay. There are of course some well established sites such as Craig’s List and Gumtree that provided successful online trading abilities, but the enhanced social element of the newer sites has meant they have come under strong pressure from the competition. They encourage a more discerning buying process whereby you can do some background research on the seller, request more information, or even ask the opinion of some experts in the field. For example, before you make that commitment to buy one of those second hand bikes you can request more pics, query your friends about it, or ask those people who are hanging out in the cycling community section if you are making the right choice, and if not, what is the right one?
Moreover, people now even have the ability to actually seek out items that they are looking for via sites such as Twitter. For example an extreme sports enthusiast might post on their twitter profile that they are looking for 7’6” surfboards, and because of the potential size and power of the networks here, they will likely find multiple people very quickly who have suitable surfboards for sale
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