I’ll add to this that when I first registered at mastodon.social, my default view was some fancied up multi-column monstrosity. I managed to turn most of that off, but it was super confusing at first. Start simple and let users add complexity.

Also agree about the empty feed. At least default to the explore tab. Way better would be a tool to help build your feed based on interests. There are various tools for that, but a user shouldn’t have to leave the app and google around to discover them.

A tool to read your phone contacts and search for corresponding mastodon accounts would be intrusive (some would even say unprincipled), but many users would welcome it.

I order stuff from ebay. Got a phone on the way from china right now. Ebay work-alike might not be a bad place to start.

Another issue might be, how do you deal with people selling illegal items/services? How do you avoid “Silk Road” style liability? Would there be a blacklist that someone running an instance could use so they don’t have to vet everyone they are federated with?

I really like the idea of a grassroots Amazon competitor. That said,

You need to have a high level of trust. A federated network of shady scams that just take your money and send you nothing half the time is not going to fly. Is there a vetting process, who controls that process, how’s all that work. If its ‘good seller’ reviews, how are those stats protected from manipulation.

You need to have extreme ease of use. UI barriers that seem trivial to developers can sink a platform.

If there are problems solvable by centralization, maybe that could be done as a cooperative organization which devs and vendors can join and run democratically.