Skip to main content

The context you need, when you need it

When news breaks, you need to understand what actually matters — and what to do about it. At Vox, our mission to help you make sense of the world has never been more vital. But we can’t do it on our own.

We rely on readers like you to fund our journalism. Will you support our work and become a Vox Member today?

Join now

Facebook’s Craigslist competitor will soon feature a lot more than just your neighbor’s old junk

Facebook wants to bring ticket sales and bigger retailers inside Marketplace.

A used car lot with a sign reading “We buy - sell”
A used car lot with a sign reading “We buy - sell”
Spencer Platt / Getty

Facebook has big plans for Marketplace, the Craigslist-like section inside its app where people can sell used goods to others in their neighborhood.

It’s just not sure what those big plans should look like.

So to figure that out, Facebook is throwing a bunch of products inside Marketplace to see what people want, including more professional products and services offered by actual retailers, not just regular Facebook users.

Facebook now shows job postings inside Marketplace, and recently started offering “daily deals” as part of a new arrangement with eBay. But Facebook has more categories coming to Marketplace, including ticket sales and products from retailers’ shopping Pages, said Deb Liu, the Facebook VP who oversees Marketplace, in an interview with Recode.

Until now, Facebook has limited postings inside Marketplace to individual users, not business Pages. But that’s changing as the company expands into more areas. Facebook hopes to learn what kinds of stuff people want to find inside Marketplace, then push deeper into those areas.

“We’ll kind of look and see what’s popular, what people want to engage with,” Liu said. “So if people are searching or looking for something, we want to make that available to them.”

One popular area has been auto sales, so Liu says Facebook will soon feature cars for sale inside Marketplace from local car dealerships. It plans to do the same with real estate listings to increase inventory for apartment hunters.

Facebook did not share details about who, specifically, it was planning to partner with for these categories. And the company did not highlight any specific retailers during our conversation.

So Facebook wants higher-quality options inside Marketplace, but it’s unclear where they will come from.

Still, some of these more traditional retail options, like ticket sales and shopping pages, already exist inside Facebook. They’re just scattered throughout the app, and it’s possible most people don’t even know they exist. Which is one of the reasons Facebook is bringing them all into one central location, Liu said.

One area it doesn’t plan to push into: Payments. Right now, Facebook connects buyers and sellers, but the actual transactions still happen off site. Facebook isn’t making money from any transactions it helps facilitate, and that’s not going to change anytime soon.

“Eventually, we could go in a number of different directions [with payments],” Liu said. “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.”

Facebook has tried to get commerce to stick inside the social network for years without much success. It closed a gifts service, and dabbled with “buy buttons” that never took off.

Marketplace is Facebook’s latest hope — and the changes raise the question of whether they are being made because the initial version of Marketplace hasn’t taken off. But Liu says Marketplace has had “tremendous growth,” with 18 million items listed inside Marketplace in the U.S. alone back in May. But not all of the items are high quality.

Given Facebook’s ambitions here, and its willingness to get more established retailers and businesses using Marketplace, that could start to change.


This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

More in Technology

Podcasts
Are humanoid robots all hype?Are humanoid robots all hype?
Podcast
Podcasts

AI is making them better — but they’re not going to be doing your chores anytime soon.

By Avishay Artsy and Sean Rameswaram
Future Perfect
The old tech that could help stop the next airborne pandemicThe old tech that could help stop the next airborne pandemic
Future Perfect

Glycol vapors, explained.

By Shayna Korol
Future Perfect
Elon Musk could lose his case against OpenAI — and still get what he wantsElon Musk could lose his case against OpenAI — and still get what he wants
Future Perfect

It’s not about who wins. It’s about the dirty laundry you air along the way.

By Sara Herschander
Life
Why banning kids from AI isn’t the answerWhy banning kids from AI isn’t the answer
Life

What kids really need in the age of artificial intelligence.

By Anna North
Culture
Anthropic owes authors $1.5B for pirating work — but the claims process is a Kafkaesque messAnthropic owes authors $1.5B for pirating work — but the claims process is a Kafkaesque mess
Culture

“Your AI monster ate all our work. Now you’re trying to pay us off with this piece of garbage that doesn’t work.”

By Constance Grady
Future Perfect
Some deaf children are hearing again because of a new gene therapySome deaf children are hearing again because of a new gene therapy
Future Perfect

A medical field that almost died is quietly fixing one disease at a time.

By Bryan Walsh