Facebook + Craigslist = Worked Like a Charm

My wife and I have just sold our two year old designer sofa in less than 24 hours. First step was taking a picture and posting it on Craigslist. What really closed the deal, however, was inserting that Craigslist link to our listing, into our Facebook status message (we did it with Gtalk status as well). It was my wife's brilliant idea and it worked like a charm. It's too early to say if this implies a new market or business model, but the experience was so positive - it makes me wonder. Most of us would rather buy from or sell goods to people we know and trust. More importantly, when that transaction is time sensitive, that connection might be even more crucial. Food for thought...

Comments

[Arda Kutsal]

I've experienced a quite similar situation. I needed a web designer for a new project. Instead of posting to a job board, just changed my status on Turkey's most popular blog social network, Blograzzi.com, as "looking for a web designer". Also posted it to FriendFeed. I received 15 connection in less than 24 hours. More than a half of the connections were from Blograzzi.

I felt so good and also so social! :)

[Kerim]

Great idea! I will try the same for my motorcycle...

[Cem Sertoglu]

@Kerim- Keep the bike, dude!

Aydin- Remember Clay Shirky's definition of social media: Anything that's worth spamming! :)

[Jason Shellen]

Hi Aydin!

I actually think it depends on the item. I can't think of anything worse than selling a car or any electronic item to someone you know. If the item breaks then friction over a purchase would be transfered to the relationship. Friends of friends might be a better target audience. Edgeio.com tried to do this on blogs and experienced the same trouble. However, I can see that for jobs or something less delicate than electronics that the friend network is much more attractive.

[Erol Toker]

I completely agree with the message behind your post. The practice of leveraging these technologies to connect sellers and buyers is getting more and more popular. The use of facebook/craigstlist have become the norm among college students because of their efficiency (my friends were able to sublet an apartment with four rooms in 2 days by posting on craigslist alone).

What's really exciting is the potential that mobile platforms offer in enhancing this functionality further- the ability to match buyers and sellers in real-time by geography. I'd commented on this on my blog- "Say you’re looking for a new apartment; there’s a good chance that you walk by half a dozen great apartments on the way to work each day without knowing it. Imagine that a service knows of this and sends you a message saying (“Apartment 411, 12 Barclay’s Street, $3500 a month, resident accepting inquiries now)" I believe that someone's going to make a killing in this field