Facebook Marketplace lets you browse a relevancy-sorted feed of things to buy from people who live nearby, and quickly list your own stuff for sale.
That prime location could make Marketplace the digital version of impulse buys at the checkout counter. The more of the commerce experience it owns, the more it can earn indirectly through ads. Facebook has been trying to win local commerce for almost a decade. But Marketplace never gained massive traction and in Facebook transferred control to Oodle, the commerce platform powering it.
It was shut down in Facebook Marketplace has three main features: Browse To Buy — Marketplace opens to a filtered feed of items you can buy from your community. Sell Your Stuff — Rather than having to set up a new profile, you can easily snap a photo of your item, add a description, set an asking price, and publish your listing.
Search Your Surroundings — Along with browsing specific categories like Household or Electronics, you can also search for something specific and filter what you see by location, category, and price or through a map.
It was dead-simple, flexible, and launched long before many rivals. It has incredible inertia, with buyers and sellers both gravitating back to it because it aggregates the most supply and demand, despite its lack of features. For example, reviews, calendars, and built-in payment helped Airbnb steal the short-term rentals marketplace from Craigslist. Seating charts and filtering options let StubHub steal ticket resales. No one has been able to wrestle the home for peer-to-peer selling away from Craigslist, but Facebook might have the best chance for these three reasons.
