And why the hell did consumers adopt this “experience” over the robust incumbents? In Canada, Kijiji was and is 10x better. In the US, Craigslist.
It sucks because Marketplace is such a piece of shit. The search doesn't work, it always interjects shit that you don't want. It doesn't find all items within certain search parameters, etc. About 1/20 times that I do a search, the entire page comes back blank, or with 30 sponsored listings and no actual results.
It's the same reason that Facebook Groups took over for a lot of forums. Using a forum took some effort. You had to create an account, log in, upload photos to a host. You had to be really into it... and so a lot the low-quality shit was filtered out in the forums, just by being sort of hard to use. Now you just go on FB Groups make a shitty post with some shitty pics, no effort, thought or time has to be put in. Flooded with low-quality crap and repeat questions and topics.
You go on the groups now, and the quantity of the same questions being asked over and over is ridiculous. The search sucks, Facebook Groups are trash.
This is just like how Microsoft Teams came to be. It didn't get popular because it was a good product. It's literally one of the worst software applications that I have ever used. They already had the userbase (all the O365 subs), and gave it away. People take shitty and 'free' over good and costs money. Competition crushed.
As a seller, I am guaranteed to get 10-20 scam messages in the first 24h of my post on Craigslist; text, email, and phone. God forbid you were bold/stupid enough to put your real information in there. You have to use burners or congratulations, you've signed up for a lifetime of scam calls.
Facebook Marketplace has many faults, but it is relatively easy-to-use, has a wide audience, attracts more serious buyers in my experience, has low spam/scam volume, actually attempts to address scammers (albeit cumbersomely; this is still a differentiator from CL) and allows me to know something about who I am trying to make a deal with.
Marketplace is succeeding despite its faults precisely because the other options are generally such terrible experiences.
Full disclosure - I use the mobile web experience because I refuse to install the app. I would rather Craiglist 8 days a week, but because FB has the user already there, logged in, they've gained a lot of traction with a seriously inferior product.