The Facebook marketplace has been a success for the social media, essentially moving in on the space that CraigsList had been filling for years. Allowing people to buy and sell new and used products through Facebook is an easy and effective option that many people enjoy. To try to improve the service, Facebook is inviting retailers to also post in the Marketplace.
Facebook claims that they are still trying to figure out what it is that people want in the Marketplace, and will be doing tweaking to meet those needs. Deb Liu, the head of Marketplace at Facebook, said, “We’ll kind of look and see what’s popular, what people want to engage with. So if people are searching or looking for something, we want to make that available to them.”
The expanded options in the marketplace will include vehicles from area dealerships, event tickets, and much more. Facebook still isn’t planning on getting involved with the payments between the buyers and sellers, but that hasn’t been ruled out as an option in the future.
Liu said, “Eventually, we could go in a number of different directions [with payments]. But right now we’re really trying to figure out, ‘how do you actually drive engagement between people and businesses, people and other people locally?’ That’s how we really think about the product.”
This obviously creates a lot of opportunity for many brands and marketers who were previously kept out of the Facebook Marketplace. Taking advantage of this popular service could generate a lot of revenue.
