Facebook Marketplace Released: Is Craigslist Gone Soon?

Due to high demand for a better and safer buy-and-sell avenue as evident in Facebook groups, Mark Zuckerberg and company recently rolled out "Marketplace." The website feature has been a melting pot of products for those who are in search or in task to destash items.

According to Tech Crunch, Facebook "Marketplace" is fruition of almost half-a-million buy and sell transactions in Facebook groups and this new venture by the social media giant could easily be the end of other buy and sell sites. "Marketplace" has three features: Browse To Buy, Sell Your Stuff and Search Your Surroundings.

Facebook "Marketplace" has been initially released in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.With it, users can filter items by location, category or price. Subcategories include household, electronics, apparel and others.

With the help of Facebook profiles, transactions are made personalized unlike that of Craigslist where sellers can be anonymous--a definite downside which makes the site laden with scammers. For now, Pages are not yet available in Facebook Marketplace, and if one day it will, it can be a good news for business establishments.

In a report by Yahoo!, this concept of Marketplace is not a new thing that Facebook has ventured. Some may still be familiar with it as it first debuted in 2007 but received a rather lackadaisical reception. Then "Marketplace" shut down in 2014, but Facebook introduced "For Sale Groups."

The groups, which enabled users to post their products, became a huge success that it even outplayed Craigslist when it comes to users. Facebook groups started out with only 50 million active buyers and sellers but now, it has grown into a massive 1.71 billion users monthly.

Marketplace is, so far, available only for mobile and will be expanded for use across the globe, and in the web, should it prosper. It is available for Facebook-installed iPhone and Android phones.

Do you think it can beat Craigslist and other e-commerce platform? Share to us your insights below!