Is Facebook about to take over another huge part of the economy?

FACEBOOK is already raking in billions, but there’s always more to be made. And its plans could spell the end of other big businesses.

FACEBOOK could soon become a lot more powerful — and ruin a lot of businesses that didn’t even know they were competing with it.

“Buy Swap Sell” groups on Facebook are something I’ve been dimly aware of for a while now. A woman I know with a new baby is fanatical about one based in her local area. She uses it to buy and sell baby items, etc.

But recently I learned the reach of these groups is far more than second-hand rattles and tiny jumpsuits.

Another friend — a cyclist — told me with glee how he is using Facebook to sell old bike stuff he doesn’t want any more, and getting crazily good prices. He found an Australian group dedicated to a fancy brand of bike clothing where people are happy to pay top dollar for his second hand Lycra.

Dedicated marketplaces — some focused on local areas and some focused on specific products — have incredible potential.

Just one of the thousands of Facebook Buy Swap Sell groups allowing people to trade with other people locally.

There are now Facebook trading groups all over Australia and Facebook is trying to make them as easy as possible to set up. About a year ago it rolled out special features to those groups that make it simple to set up an ad with a price, etc.

Facebook previously tried to set up classifieds back in 2007, but back then the site had just 50 million users and they weren’t ready for it. Now it has 30 times as many active users — 1.5 billion and the time is ripe.

Gumtree and its parent company eBay must be shaking in terror. The classified advertisement business is worth a lot — carsales.com.au, for example, is a listed company worth $3 billion. But Facebook, it seems, could come to own the space.

Plus you’ll find legends like this, selling things in creative ways.

ZUCKERBERG’S BALLOONING BILLIONS

There was a time — not long ago — when Facebook looked iffy.

Shortly after it floated on the stock exchange its share price sank. Investors who bought in at $38 a share looked like they had lost half their money.

It looked to be at risk from Snapchat and Instagram and a lot else. Experts wondered if it would adapt to the rise of mobile computing.

But those apps didn’t hurt it, the rise of mobile played to Facebook’s advantage, and it recovered spectacularly.

You’d be kicking yourself if you sold after their big drop in 2012.

Now Facebook is basically part of the internet infrastructure. Last time I read an article about a new social network being called a “Facebook killer” was 2014 and I doubt I’ll see another one for years.

The memory of MySpace is ancient now. (In 2009 most MySpace users simply left for Facebook.) The idea of a widescale abandonment of Facebook feels kind of ludicrous. How would you even co-ordinate it?

The rise of classified advertising inside Facebook confirms the social network is a fixture in our lives. And these ads are so very valuable. They give the California-based company even more info about what we want to buy, who we are and where we live. That’s worth a fortune to advertisers.

But that’s not all.

In America you can send money through Facebook messenger. It might one day be possible to do whole transactions on Facebook. And if money is changing hands on their site they can take a little commission, creating a direct revenue stream. (This is unlikely to happen any time soon — Facebook is smart enough to try to capture the whole market before charging for using it.)

TIME IS A FLAT CIRCLE

As Facebook grows more enormous, more powerful and more unprecedented in the history of social networks, it also comes to look weirdly … familiar.

1. It is increasingly full of content — including stories from news sites like this. Facebook also encourages news sites to publish directly to Facebook — a feature called instant articles.

2. Alongside the articles: a mix of ads and classified ads.

Does that remind you of newspapers?

Classified ads were known as “rivers of gold” and they propped up the newspaper industry for years, pre-internet. It was an arrangement that worked beautifully combined with revenue from ads.

There are a lot of differences between Facebook and the newspaper industry — the main one being that Facebook is a single entity while newspapers are diverse.

But anything could happen. And in a future where it is not clear how funding for journalism will be found, a new candidate has just emerged.

Jason Murphy is an economist. He publishes the blog Thomas The Think Engine. Follow him on Twitter @jasemurphy.