This question (title) is born out of frustration in trying to teach my mother how to use eBay on her iPad to do simple occasional buying/selling.
Needless to say, it hasn't gone smoothly. I can't believe the complete and utter disconjunction between the various areas of the site, let alone between the apps and website. It's barely usable.
And whilst I understand a lot of the headaches and hoops they force you to jump through are to cover their own backs in attempts to protect both buyers and sellers, it's still just a complete mine-field.
Is there any good reason that sites like eBay, Craigslist, Gumtree, etc haven't been pushed aside by a sleek, modern, UX-focused SV-startup yet?
I could easily see eBay being what MySpace was to the social-network space in 2007.
There's interesting startups on the seller side that let people instantly get money for their goods and take care of the whole process making it friction-less. I think what will eventually disrupt general marketplaces [eBay] is simply sellers fleeing to seller-specific services and buyers using retail-oriented sites (like amazon) with a better experience.