Is Facebook Marketplace Set to Destroy eBay and Gumtree?
October 14, 2016
Move over eBay and Gumtree, there’s a new kid in town: Facebook Marketplace.
Seizing the opportunity from more than 450 million monthly active users of Facebook buy and sell groups, Facebook created the online shopping forum to make the process of buying and selling goods more organised and efficient.
What is Facebook marketplace?
Facebook Marketplace is a FREE buying and selling feature on Facebook that appears on the mobile application at the bottom of the screen.
Browse, buy and sell items within your local community. Listings are limitless and range from cars to furniture to even purchasing a house.
How does it work?
Sellers take a photo of their item, entering the necessary fields and selecting a category. Potential buyers search for items either by category, price or location.
To register an interest or purchase a product, users send a direct message to the seller. This means that Facebook does not receive any compensation from sales and makes it a cost-effective alternative for users.
The downside
Unlike other buy and sell platforms, like eBay and Gumtree, Facebook Marketplace does not offer payment and delivery features. Yet.
As well, Facebook Marketplace is only available in the mobile app and not currently available on desktop, which may leave rivals with the upper hand. For now.
The future of Facebook Marketplace
The feature uses Facebook’s algorithms to predict what users might be interested in. Currently, Facebook considers your activity and interaction with pages, groups and stories to estimate what you might be looking for. However, as the platform evolves, Facebook will show listings based on what you have previously looked at on Marketplace itself.
Whilst Marketplace was developed as a function for consumers, we predict if consumers adopt Marketplace, the platform could expand and make way for more business friendly selling practices.
Whilst Facebook Marketplace may not benefit your business immediately, this could be the beginning of a new distribution channel for your business. Watch this space.
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