On October 3, Facebook announced a new Marketplace. Have you checked it out yet? It hasn’t launched without some trouble, that’s why we waited to really talk about it. Plus, it was rolled out to users over the course of a few days and not all at once, so you probably didn’t see it the first day. First of all, as soon as Facebook announced the Marketplace, advertisements showed up selling drugs, guns and babies. We’re not joking unfortunately. Some of the unsavory advertisements were clearly jokes, but others weren’t so clearly meant as a farce. Facebook responded by saying that since the system was new, their technology for catching and deleting posts that violated their policy hadn’t yet caught up to what people were posting.
Facebook’s new Marketplace is a bold effort to squeeze themselves in between Craigslist and eBay as well as possibly give them a new revenue stream in the future. They’ve been heading in a more commercial direction for the past year or so, as they’ve changed their formulas, placing business-related posts less often in people’s news streams and making businesses feel like they had little choice but to purchase sponsored and promoted posts.
As of the Marketplace’s launch, 1 of 5 customers said they would buy directly from Facebook. We expect that number to increase as more consumers check it out. After all, millions upon millions of people pop on and off of Facebook daily. According to Facebook’s own statistics, as of September 2016, there are more than 1.71 billion monthly active Facebook users, which is a 15% increase over 2015. It’s an easy next step to have those users making purchases, because they are already logged in to the service and Facebook already has their personal information, including, in many cases, their billing information. Only 1 out of 10 consumers said they would purchase from Twitter. Would you? No, us either. Hundreds of millions of people already use Facebook groups to organize buying and selling. So far, the Marketplace is a service like Craigslist, where the app just facilitates buying and selling and Facebook itself doesn’t handle payments.
The Marketplace icon will only appear on mobile apps at first, with desktop coming later. Marketplace will display photos of items for sale based on proximity, and users can adjust their location and search for specific items or categories such as clothing, household items or electronics. The new feature will be offered to over-18 users in the United States, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand at first, through the Facebook app.
Find Facebook Marketplace at https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/ or by tapping on the Shops icon in the Facebook app.
Marketers can use the Marketplace to get a sense of what people in their community are shopping for. Listings could be for books, DVDs, jobs, roommates, etc. According to Facebook’s own announcement, you can create a listing for anything and track your connections, giving marketers a new way to reach potential customers. Eventually, according to Facebook, users will be able to take photos and upload them using Messenger. You can post to Marketplace or to a specific buy and sell group at the same time. A list called Your Items helps you keep track of what you’ve saved and posted for sale and your messages to people.
