Dive Brief:
- Facebook is taking a page from the venerable Craigslist playbook with its new Marketplace feature according to reporting from Marketing Land.
- The feature is a new section on the app where users can post items for sale, and that’s the extent of its capabilities. According to Facebook, it will take no part in payment processing or shipping.
- Tellingly, Marketplaces is limited to Facebook users. Page owners, including brands, won’t be able to post items to buy, and there is no option to pay to highlight placements.
Dive Insight:
Contrasted with Shops that Facebook launched last year, and its more recent changes to brand Pages that removed advertisements and added a “shop” section, as well as an update to its Offers coupon feature, Marketplace completely cuts brands and any marketing out of the picture. All those recent moves were very brand-friendly from a social media platform that had been moving toward an almost all advertising pay-for-play model for marketers, giving brands a reason to engage with Facebook with organic outreach to its audience.
Given the very bare bones nature of Marketplace, essentially creating a classified-ad like experience that simply connects buyers with sellers, this move is an effort by Facebook to give users another reason to remain within the in-app experience.
Marketplace is located in the Facebook app and opens with photos of nearby items for sale. Users can send a direct message from Marketplace to tell someone they are interested in an item. Marketplace is rolling out in the U.S., U.K., Australia and New Zealand, with more countries to be added. A desktop version is also in the works.
The online classifieds space continues to grow, driven in part by the popularity of mobile apps such as Letgo and eBay's own Close5. Facebook wants to carve out a place for itself in this space.
