Facebook launches eBay rival Marketplace in Australia, letting users buy and sell items

THE world’s biggest social network will open an online store of sorts today, with a new feature letting users buy and sell items within Facebook’s app.

Facebook will launch Marketplace to let users buy and sell goods on the social network. Picture: Supplied

EXCLUSIVE

THE world’s biggest social network wants you to update your status, upload a selfie and, now, buy something from a friend.

Facebook will launch a new feature called Marketplace in Australia today, allowing its 1.7 billion users to buy and sell items from inside the social network’s app.

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Australia will be one of just four countries to receive Facebook’s online store at launch, although retail experts warned it could put pressure on our existing internet traders such as eBay and Gumtree.

Social network Facebook will launch Marketplace in Australia, the United States, United Kingdom, and New Zealand, on October 4.

Facebook Marketplace manager Bowen Pan said the company created the online trading feature in response to users setting up trading groups on its network.

“There are more than 450 million people who visit buy-and-sell groups each month,” he said.

“That’s a quarter of people who visit Facebook.”

Mr Pan said the new Marketplace feature could be accessed by tapping a shop icon in Facebook’s app, and items for sale would be shown by their location.

Facebook users would also be able to change the search location, search for specific items, or browse items by category.

“We learned that the majority of our users who came to Marketplace didn’t have a product in mind,” he said. “They are just open to browsing and find the experience entertaining.”

Facebook is launching a buy and sell site to rival eBay. Picture: Supplied

Facebook users would also be able to sell items by adding a title, description, and photo, he said, and Facebook would neither charge for listings nor provide a payment system to make trades.

“We facilitate the conversation and how they choose to buy the item is up to them,” Mr Pan said.

Sellers could trade messages with buyers to set up a trade, and would be able to see the other user’s public Facebook profile. Sales wouldn’t be listed in user profiles, Mr Pan said, unless they had requested them to be shown.

Facebook’s formal buying-and-selling feature could challenge Australia’s top online shopping website, eBay, however, which attracted an average of 7.8 million Australians each month in the year ending this June, according to Roy Morgan Research.

The firm’s chief executive Michele Levin said 8.3 million Australians bought something from the internet each month, on average, and online shopping had grown 37 per cent over the past four years.

But Australian Retailers Association spokeswoman Carla Bridge said Facebook’s entry into buying and selling online was unlikely to challenge traditional retail outlets, and would simply bring more second-hand trading online.

“These types of groups are already fairly well established and this is just adding a level of security,” she said.

“Before they were something stuck up on a power pole or at a garage sale. They have always been around. It’s not necessarily a competition.”

Facebook Marketplace will be rolled out to its Google Android and Apple iOS apps in Australia, New Zealand, the United States, and United Kingdom from today.

A desktop version of the feature is due to launch “in the coming months”.

Originally published as Facebook launches eBay rival Marketplace in Australia, letting users buy and sell items