You are probably already familiar with those private groups on Facebook, where people sell their stuff. Facebook created a new service on their platform as an addition to those groups. On the 3th of October 2016, Facebook launched its new service called Marketplace. The mobile version of this new feature is rolled out in the United States, followed by the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand and is only available for users over eighteen years. Facebook announced that the desktop version will be available in a few months. This platform seems to be a new attempt of Facebook trying to engage its users to its platform. But the great question is: is there a future for this new service and will it become the new eBay?
Facebook already has a great network of 1.71 billion users. According to Facebook, more than 450 million users already use those Facebook groups to sell or buy new items. Selling and buying on Facebook is already very popular. Marketplace is supposed to be an easier and clearer way of selling. The mass of Facebook users, will definitely be Facebooks biggest advantage and gives this new service a great chance for survival. Facebook has an immense range of users and potential to attract new users to this service.
Another great thing about this new feature, is the ease of its use. People already spend a lot of time on Facebook and are familiar with the use of it. Offering a new item for sale, is just as easy as placing a new Facebook post. You upload a picture of your item, add a description, price and location and your item is ready to be sold.
In contrast to eBay, Facebook has a lot more information and data about its users. The marketplace of Facebook employs this data by using an algorithm that determines what the user needs to see first. Facebook exactly knows the interests of its users, their GPS location and is analyzing their behavior on this virtual marketplace. This way Facebook can predict what people want to buy and helps the sellers to sell their stuff in a faster way.
There seems to be only one downside to this new service and that is that Facebook does not facilitate any payment methods. Therefore, I think there is a lot of potential for this new service to become very successful and become the new eBay and become the worlds largest new yard sale.
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/03/facebook-launches-new-marketplace-for-buying-selling.html
http://hellogiggles.com/facebooks-newest-feature-helpful-many-ways/
http://www.nu.nl/internet/4330763/facebook-krijgt-marktplaatsfunctie-tweedehands-spullen.html
Dear Busra, thank you for your blog! I have read about the new marketplace as well yesterday and I think it is a great idea! I do not think it is a disadvantage that Facebook doesn’t facilitate payment methods. The biggest second hand platform in the Netherlands, Marktplaats, doesn’t facilitate payment methods either: you have to figure it out yourself as a seller/buyer. Next to that, for example on the Facebook group commodity market rotterdam, there is no payment facilitation either, and people often pick up their items so they can check them first. Therefore, I think Marketplace has great potential to be a success, even without payment facilitation.
Thank you Busra for your interesting post.
I think this is a really smart move of Facebook. Integrating a marketplace with their social network has a couple of benefits. First of all it has, of course, the network effect. As you mentioned many people are using the Facebook platform and this creates and extensive buyer and seller basis. A second benefit of the Facebook marketplace (in my opinion) is that a buyer can do a little research on the seller. Since people will sell their stuff using their Facebook account, it is harder to sell fake objects, not deliver or other fraud. Of course people can still make a fake account, but fake account are mostly easy to detect (low amount of friends, relative new profile). A third benefit is that it is easy to come in contact with the seller/buyer. Just send a personal message to the other person and you can even negotiate on the price.
So I totally agree with you and think this will become a successful marketplace.
Hi Busra, thank you for your post! I was indeed very intrigued when reading about this addition to their platform. What you say about the number of users that Facebook has and the data that it has gathered from this users, is true, I think. This could give them a proper head start in battling eBay and local online markets such as Marktplaats in the Netherlands. However, I am not so sure of the potential of the Marketplace as you seem to be. I think that it could well be that users are not interested in using Marketplace, since there are already so many established players in that market. Maybe they will want to keep using Facebook for its original goal – keeping in touch with their friends. I think that what you say, that they currently have not included any official payment methods, is not helping their case. However, I am very curious to see how this platform develops!
Hi Busra, thanks for your post.
I think Facebook Marketplace definitely has the potential knock other players of the podium (if this is Ebay I’m not sure about, think players like Craigslist or Marktplaats have more to worry about).
Most important thing is liquidity (lots of buyers and sellers) which both Craigslist and Marktplaats have. On the other hand, Facebook has indeed the 1,71B users, with profiles, built-in messaging and payment features already coming. So not sure if the current players can differentiate themselves from Facebook on this point for much longer.
I believe that the having the profiles is by far the biggest advantage for Facebook. People will check out a person’s Facebook account before buying from/meeting up with that person. This way a thing that is going to happen is that “stranger danger” (which you have with Craigslist and Marktplaats) is going to be replaced with “let me stalk them until I feel comfortable about meeting up” 😛