In a direct challenge to eBay, social network Facebook is trialling a new marketplace feature with users in Sydney, Australia and Auckland, New Zealand.
Details are a little bit scarce but it seems like Facebook are utilising their knowledge of users’ locations to target sales to hone a local marketplace. In that sense what we might see is a more Gumtree like classifieds marketpace focussing on local trading emerge on Facebook. Sounds like a canny idea.
A Facebook spokesperson says: “We are in the very early stages of testing a new way for more people to easily discover, buy, and sell items with other people on Facebook.”
We’d be very interested to hear from any Sydney or Auckland locals who might be able to shed some light on the new service. Please do drop us a line and we’d love to see screen grabs too.
Obviously, any incursion into ecommerce by Facebook is hardly a surprise and should surely also be welcome. They want to further monetise the Facebook experience and many local traders also want to use it more effectively on a commercial basis.
If you see anything, do let us know.
2 Responses
Does ebay really have a presence in NZ ?. I hardly get any custom from there as opposed to Australia where I sell quite a bit.
Maybe in competition with Trademe which is a big player in NZ.
I think it does have a site but Trademe really is dominant over there.
Also, it has a substantially smaller population than Australia.
dw