This is nice, I like it. It's very simple and has a clean design. I'm not sure how they're going to make money with it since the sellers use their own PayPal accounts. Though, how else could you do it without putting your ass on the line? All you'd need is a string of bad sellers to send PayPal running for the hills.
Not a bad idea at all. I wonder though, since the buyer can file a complaint directly through PayPal if holding the payment would be enough. It would be sort of like having all credit card-paying customers initiate chargebacks when they want a refund.
Admittedly I've only recently begun using PayPal for selling so I'm still a bit unsure about how they handle some scenarios.
The original problem was simply "I want to hook up a photo and my paypal account easily, so I can share the link with friends and sell my (physical) stuff".
As you've touched on, I really don't want to get into payment processing myself (messy), even though it would be a simple path to revenue generation. I also don't want to charge people outright for using the service. I think this is way more casual than regular e-commerce, I'm not going to take a % transactional fee and/or a monthly fee just so a girl can sell a pair of shoes she doesn't wear.
I figure that with enough mass there will be other opportunities to generate revenue by upselling services to help people extract more value. For example more visibility - if there's something you need to sell urgently, pay $1 and it appears on the top for a given locality / tag.
I'm not really concentrating on building mass yet though. It's still very much in the MVP stage - right now all I want to prove is that I can help people sell their stuff. Need to get that right first.
I wouldn't call it a hyperlocal flea market, that makes me think of craigslist for my block, when I think what you're trying to do is more of an etsy meets gumroad.
I'm kind of concentrating on one region for now (Singapore) so I've been letting those people in first from the waiting list, but if you have things to sell I'll let you in :)
If I was a seller, I would be extremely uncomfortable with Tinytrunk showing my full-name in all of the items that I am trying to sell. I can foresee some privacy issues with this problem. For example, People can easily find information about me via google or some deep search engine.
Instead, you can perhaps go with the Yelp route -- show the the user's first name and initial of his or her last name, e.g. Bill G. instead of Bill Gates.
The original reason for this was accountability - I don't want to build a marketplace where any random username can just put up a photo of a product and collect money into a paypal account. That seems like it's asking for trouble.
But I also see what you are saying. First name + initial is a decent compromise.
To show how potentially creepy this is, I googled your users. I was able to find the user's linkedin and twitter in the 1st page of the search results.
Anyways, good luck. I love the idea, and your design is fantastic. Best of luck going forward.
I don't know why you think that's creepy. They put that information out there to begin with and for a reason (to be read by humans). Some things online require an identity. Things that involve money also involve real-life consequences and responsibilities to different parties.
It would be an overwhelmingly bad idea to start letting sellers hide behind usernames if those sellers are responsible for accepting money and shipping products. (This would be somewhat solved by Tinytrunk handling payments, but that goes against one of his stated goals of not charging processing fees.)
I'm not sure I feel strongly about either side of the discussion, but just to be clear you're saying you think it would be "an overwhelmingly bad idea to [create ebay]"?
Edit: I actually didn't know, so I looked it up. Turns out that eBay does not handle payments. Though I suppose they're relying on the reputation system.
So it's not an overwhelmingly bad idea to allow sellers to hide behind usernames when they're handling payments and shipping as long as there is a good reputation system in place. Which makes sense since that's why you would want your name there anyway, to lend or gain reputation.
Don't take me wrong. I am not arguing that the Tinytrunk should allow arbitrary pseudonyms.
I fully understand the point that Fookyoung made. That he want to make sure real, accountable users are selling things on Tinytrunk.
Obviously, Fookyoung is trying to balance between preventing seller fraud and Tinytrunk's user experience. However, I think the balance is tipped towards preventing seller fraud at the expense of user experience.
However, there potentially harmful and/or unintended consequences that can result from publicly disclosing the user's full name on the internet, e.g. privacy related issues. For example, a malicious user can easily obtain sensitive and private information about a certain seller ala 4chan style either directly or indirectly. Also, we've seen how users reactive negatively to potential privacy issues nowadays [cite various user discontent towards facebook, google plus, and various social networks here].
Also, this is not a binary issue, e.g. either disclose the user's full-name or use nothing but pseudonyms. There are other alternatives and compromises, like the yelp method that I described above (which task rabbit also uses).
We can argue further on the issue of real names vs pseudonyms on preventing seller fraud. Like someone above me pointed out, ebay is a great example of a buying/selling market that thrived despite its users hiding behind pseudonyms. Etsy is also another example. Let's not forget various online forums that have thriving for-sale and for-trade sub-forums w/ its sellers and buyers using pseudonyms, e.g. AnandTech and Hard[OC].
You make some great points. My original assertion about hiding behind usernames has been thoroughly blown out of the water, given the success of eBay and Etsy. I had always assumed that they handled the payments themselves, but clearly they've found ways to protect buys and sellers without sacrificing privacy.
I prefer when everyone knows who everyone else is, personally, but I understand that many people don't want to broadcast their personal information.
This looks very nice which leads me to a somewhat tangential question: how is it that the photography on these sites is so gorgeous?
This is just supposed to be stuff from one's closet. I fancy myself as handy with a DSLR and even I wonder if I'd be taking such classy DOF-y Bokeh-y pics of watches and shoes to post on (an admittedly much niftier version of) Craigslist?
Just imagine what a poorer impression this site would make if the pics actually were like what you'd find on Craigslist? Is the front page curated like heck or what?
I think I just got lucky with the first batch of users. The homepage is not curated. Everything is just in chronological order of upload.
You raise a good point though, crappier pictures would definitely lower the first impression and if/when I achieve mass with this project then curation of some sort will have to factor into the homepage products.
Thanks for replying. I am not so much skeptical as I am jealous :-)
Anyway, I wish you all luck in hitting critical mass soon - I've requested an invite myself (email is in my HN profile) and if you can speed up my request to join, I'll be happy to post some stuff I've got and send you feedback on the process.
29 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 69.8 ms ] threadAdmittedly I've only recently begun using PayPal for selling so I'm still a bit unsure about how they handle some scenarios.
The original problem was simply "I want to hook up a photo and my paypal account easily, so I can share the link with friends and sell my (physical) stuff".
As you've touched on, I really don't want to get into payment processing myself (messy), even though it would be a simple path to revenue generation. I also don't want to charge people outright for using the service. I think this is way more casual than regular e-commerce, I'm not going to take a % transactional fee and/or a monthly fee just so a girl can sell a pair of shoes she doesn't wear.
I figure that with enough mass there will be other opportunities to generate revenue by upselling services to help people extract more value. For example more visibility - if there's something you need to sell urgently, pay $1 and it appears on the top for a given locality / tag.
I'm not really concentrating on building mass yet though. It's still very much in the MVP stage - right now all I want to prove is that I can help people sell their stuff. Need to get that right first.
Thanks for the inspiration. I need to do this.
I wouldn't call it a hyperlocal flea market, that makes me think of craigslist for my block, when I think what you're trying to do is more of an etsy meets gumroad.
I'm kind of concentrating on one region for now (Singapore) so I've been letting those people in first from the waiting list, but if you have things to sell I'll let you in :)
If I was a seller, I would be extremely uncomfortable with Tinytrunk showing my full-name in all of the items that I am trying to sell. I can foresee some privacy issues with this problem. For example, People can easily find information about me via google or some deep search engine.
Instead, you can perhaps go with the Yelp route -- show the the user's first name and initial of his or her last name, e.g. Bill G. instead of Bill Gates.
The original reason for this was accountability - I don't want to build a marketplace where any random username can just put up a photo of a product and collect money into a paypal account. That seems like it's asking for trouble.
But I also see what you are saying. First name + initial is a decent compromise.
To show how potentially creepy this is, I googled your users. I was able to find the user's linkedin and twitter in the 1st page of the search results.
Anyways, good luck. I love the idea, and your design is fantastic. Best of luck going forward.
But yes, full disclosure might not be appropriate.
It would be an overwhelmingly bad idea to start letting sellers hide behind usernames if those sellers are responsible for accepting money and shipping products. (This would be somewhat solved by Tinytrunk handling payments, but that goes against one of his stated goals of not charging processing fees.)
Edit: I actually didn't know, so I looked it up. Turns out that eBay does not handle payments. Though I suppose they're relying on the reputation system.
So it's not an overwhelmingly bad idea to allow sellers to hide behind usernames when they're handling payments and shipping as long as there is a good reputation system in place. Which makes sense since that's why you would want your name there anyway, to lend or gain reputation.
that's actually one of the reasons I don't use eBay to sell things, I have no reputation on eBay.
but selling to my locality, I'm happy to give away my identity in exchange for an instant boost of reputation / buyer peace-of-mind.
I fully understand the point that Fookyoung made. That he want to make sure real, accountable users are selling things on Tinytrunk.
Obviously, Fookyoung is trying to balance between preventing seller fraud and Tinytrunk's user experience. However, I think the balance is tipped towards preventing seller fraud at the expense of user experience.
However, there potentially harmful and/or unintended consequences that can result from publicly disclosing the user's full name on the internet, e.g. privacy related issues. For example, a malicious user can easily obtain sensitive and private information about a certain seller ala 4chan style either directly or indirectly. Also, we've seen how users reactive negatively to potential privacy issues nowadays [cite various user discontent towards facebook, google plus, and various social networks here].
Also, this is not a binary issue, e.g. either disclose the user's full-name or use nothing but pseudonyms. There are other alternatives and compromises, like the yelp method that I described above (which task rabbit also uses).
We can argue further on the issue of real names vs pseudonyms on preventing seller fraud. Like someone above me pointed out, ebay is a great example of a buying/selling market that thrived despite its users hiding behind pseudonyms. Etsy is also another example. Let's not forget various online forums that have thriving for-sale and for-trade sub-forums w/ its sellers and buyers using pseudonyms, e.g. AnandTech and Hard[OC].
I prefer when everyone knows who everyone else is, personally, but I understand that many people don't want to broadcast their personal information.
If I get to over 100 products I'll put in filtering controls.
This is just supposed to be stuff from one's closet. I fancy myself as handy with a DSLR and even I wonder if I'd be taking such classy DOF-y Bokeh-y pics of watches and shoes to post on (an admittedly much niftier version of) Craigslist?
Just imagine what a poorer impression this site would make if the pics actually were like what you'd find on Craigslist? Is the front page curated like heck or what?
I think I just got lucky with the first batch of users. The homepage is not curated. Everything is just in chronological order of upload.
You raise a good point though, crappier pictures would definitely lower the first impression and if/when I achieve mass with this project then curation of some sort will have to factor into the homepage products.
Anyway, I wish you all luck in hitting critical mass soon - I've requested an invite myself (email is in my HN profile) and if you can speed up my request to join, I'll be happy to post some stuff I've got and send you feedback on the process.
Good luck!