4/5 (1)

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

 

4.33/5 (6)

In the first two decades of the digital age, technological innovations have evolved to threaten the economic health of major music companies. Nowadays these innovations in the form of music streaming services, seems to be the rebound of the music industry. Streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music charge their customers a monthly rate for unlimited access to their music libraries. More and more users are attracted to the music business, because of these digital music services. According to IFPI, there was an increase of 6.9% in revenue in the music industry. But are those digital services really the rescuers of the music industry?

 

The rapid growth in the use of music streaming services nowadays seems to halt piracy and peer-to-peer file sharing in music. For example, Stephen Witt in his book “How music got free” is talking about how consumer research showed that new Spotify subscribers stopped pirating more or less completely. Because of those digital music services, artists finally get paid for their hard work. This is obviously a positive outcome.

 

However, artists don’t always get a fair cut of the revenues that are earned by those music streaming services. The payout for the songwriters is even worse; the songwriter of Clique by Kanye West only got paid 60 dollars while this song was streamed 76 million times (Fusion, 2015)! Artists like Taylor Swify, Jay Z and Adele already took their music offline as a kind of protest, in order to force improvement of artists’ royalties.

 

Due to the popularity of online music streaming services, there is an upcoming generation of music fans who take instant access to music for granted. A lot of those people will probably never experience the feeling of spending their hard-earned cash on records and having a collection of CD’s. It almost seems as if these modern-day innovations are wiping away an essential part of our culture.

 

In my opinion, music streaming services are a good thing since it makes music accessible for everyone and stops piracy. However, I think that artists should use those services as an investment to promote their work. They should make it somehow attractive for their fans to keep buying records for the real music experience. This way music streaming services are not the final destination and destruction of music, but just a way of getting in touch with fans.

 

What do you think of music streaming services?

http://www.ifpi.org/facts-and-stats.php

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