Rumors Of A Facebook Classified Ad Service

By Author: Shiela Bartlett
Total Articles: 2
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There are rumors, again, that Facebook is looking into creating new classified listings. If it is true, then Craigslist will have another competition.

According to 2 anonymous sources for The Daily, the service would be done soon. Also, they said that the service will allow users to create ads and have those ads appear in their friends’ news feeds. The way you post ads will be the same as Craigslist but the ad would only target those who are in the same area as the creator.

There will be a unique functionality for job and housing postings. They will also include postings with ad-like topics like “How to Change Your Laptop Battery”, which would be a great bonus for companies that can offer their services as well as their tips.

According to The Daily, Facebook may charge a small amount of fee for those who are going to post an item for sale but it will essentially be free for those “for rent” advertisement types. Users can spread the ad by sharing it to their friends, like how you share a photo or wall post, even if those friends do not know who the creator is.

Looking at this rumored feature, ...
... it may be plausible especially for big companies to use this type of service because they can target their market, make more interaction, and it might even lead to companies or individuals to share added information about them to make their ads more plausible.

However, back in 2007, Facebook tried this before by creating a free classified service called Facebook Marketplace. While it exists in the site, it did not produce any interesting result and, by 2009, it was handed to a company called Oodle. This new service, according to these sources, will also be called Marketplace.

During the past years, Craigslist has been really protective on its own content and listings. They sued PadMapper and its data harvester called 3taps. They also accused two companies some infractions like copyright and trademark violation, as well as unfair competition.

Compared with what PadMapper did, Facebook is building an entirely new classified listing site. However, Facebook is giving statements that they are not building a new classified listing service.

It could be just another wrong information or Facebook is not willing to share their new services. While they still have the Facebook PPC Ads, the rumored classified service could be an update on their paid ad services.

Anyway, you have to wonder how many posts in your news feeds are going to come from advertising spammers. You have to wonder if the products and services advertisements get vetted before they are posted because we wouldn’t want young kids, with a fake age, viewing an adult ad. Trying to control what you can see and what you can post maybe a bit hard for Facebook and other online selling sites.

We could only hope, if this is true, that Facebook has found a way to block spam because it can definitely destroy the usability and ease-of-use that this particular social media site offers.