The continued expansion of Facebook continued last week when the tech industry king announced and began widespread rollout of its new resale platform, aptly titled “Marketplace.” The function immediately drew comparisons to popular resale site Craigslist.
Interestingly, this is not Facebook’s first attempt at creating such a feature. It tried to launch the concept almost 10 years ago.
As anyone even vaguely familiar with the internet might be able to imagine, as soon as the platform was announced, stories of strange and even illegal offerings began popping up everywhere.
Things ranging from partially-drunk coffees and snakes to guns and babies cropped up on the commerce site almost immediately. In the market for a bottle of water or some hair extensions? Facebook Marketplace has you covered.
In addition to the plethora of head-scratching, hilarious, useless and illegal items available, the announcement of this service raised a separate question. Is Marketplace a useful, necessary or even wanted feature?
At first blush the simple answer is no. According to market research conducted by Aimia, only one in five consumers said they would be interested in purchasing something on Facebook.
Likewise, many expressed the opinion this was something outside of Facebook’s wheelhouse and it did not make sense for Facebook to continue to venture outside being a photo-sharing social network.
However, if you look at this from the perspective of Facebook, it not only makes sense, but it slots perfectly into Facebook’s expanding assortment of features and services. Furthermore, those consumer preferences are not even the lowest on the spectrum. For example, only one of 10 consumers said they would like to be able to shop via Twitter.
During the last few years, Facebook has been quietly expanding its original concept into something far greater in pursuit of an all-encompassing social and digital experience.
Not only has Facebook acquired WhatsApp, Oculus and Instagram, but it has built up the functionality of its own services in order to offer its users all they could possibly want in an online experience.
Through the additions of live video, 3D video, voice calling and its own payment services on the Messenger app, Facebook has built up its array of services and attractions in order to entice users to never leave the site or app.
Combining those things with the added user data from the acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram, Marketplace slots in naturally as another way for Facebook to learn more about its users and consumers in general. This helps Facebook continue to appeal to advertisers, which is its main business goal and chief source of revenue.
Whether or not Marketplace surpasses Craigslist is probably not concerning to Facebook, or even its intention. Instead, Facebook just needs it to continue contributing to its larger ecosystem of engagement and consumer data. With this in mind, more information on how the user shops and sells is useful to Facebook and will be an excellent addition if its usage becomes widespread and serious.
There is obviously a chance that it will not catch on in any capacity, Facebook will continue struggling to monitor illegal goods, and it all flops.
However, if it sticks, it is not quite as useless or out-of-left-field to Facebook as an initial glance might lead you to believe.
