Facebook Tests Retail Waters with Marketplace Project

Facebook announced on its blog yesterday the launch of its online marketplace. Facebook’s marketplace will allow users to buy items from and sell them to people in their community. It is interesting to note the use of the word “community” at the end of the sentence because, without it, the announcement may well have sent the entire retail world into a tail spin.

For now, the company has decided to play just the “we will connect” role between the buyer and seller, meaning once you have decided what you want to buy and who you want to buy it from, Facebook wants the buyer and seller to workout the details in whatever the way they want. The company doesn’t intend to facilitate either payments or delivery on its platform.

Though things could rapidly change depending on how users respond to the Marketplace idea, it is still early days to even speculate where the company sees the future in offering such an application in the first place.

“Facebook is where people connect, and in recent years more people have been using Facebook to connect in another way: buying and selling with each other. This activity started in Facebook Groups and has grown substantially. More than 450 million people visit buy and sell groups each month — from families in a local neighborhood to collectors around the world.” –  Mary Ku, Director of Product Management,  Facebook

Facebook has been working on this idea for some time, launching its desktop-only classifieds marketplace way back in 2007. Techcrunch reported last year that Facebook was testing a new feature called Local Market, a dedicated buying and selling community powered by local groups.

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Image Credit: Techinasia

It’s clear that the company wants to keep things as simple as possible for the moment. As noted by the company, there are already more than 450 million people visiting buy and sell groups, and the company wants to put some more power behind such groups by making things simple to buy and sell stuff. No payments and no delivery, at least not yet. But it wouldn’t be too far-fetched a dream to expect those to eventually appear as Facebook gains more traction in this marketplace venture.

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