Facebook is a community of over 1.7 billion people and naturally, they have used this platform as a place to sell goods and services. The company has noticed this behaviour over time and introduced features like sale groups but now they are upping the ante with a dedicated tab called Marketplace.
This feature has been leaked for a while thanks to various sightings on Android and iOS but now Facebook has come forward to explain what exactly Marketplace is. “To help people make more of these connections, today we’re introducing Marketplace,” they said on their blog, ” a convenient destination to discover, buy and sell items with people in your community.”
There is a dedicated Marketplace tab with a generic shop icon which when you tap lets you either search for something, check out the various categories or sell your product. You can search for items within Marketplace also by location where you will be fed with a list of products that are being sold within your area.
When you are interested in a product, you only need to tap on the image, check the details of the seller, see the description of the product and you can decide to make an offer or send a message to the seller. You can also save the item if you want to revisit at a later time.
If you want to sell something on Facebook, you only need to tap on the sell button, take a photo of the item (or add from your gallery), add a description, its price, add the location, category and proceed to post it.
If you want to keep tabs with your activity within Marketplace, there is a “Your Items” tab where you will see your items you’ve posted for sale, saved items and all the messages you’ve sent with people.
This move should worry two kinds of companies: The ones that let people sell or buy goods on their site (OLX) or those that allow people to find and purchase goods on their site (Fancy). Facebook has clout and a massive reach and might be quite successful in this venture.
This is currently being rolled out to 4 countries: US, UK, New Zealand and Australia for both the Android and iPhone app and they promise to continue rolling it out to other countries. For those people who use the desktop version of Facebook, the company has promised that it will be available in “the coming months.”
