Facebook's new Marketplace

Facebook has launched a new feature dubbed Marketplace, a tool that formalises peer-to-peer selling through the Facebook app.

The new and better feature will offer reprieve to users who are not satisfied with traditional online shops.

What the feature offers is: Searching by location or browsing a category, viewing items for sale (including basic profile information for the seller), messaging a seller, making an offer, arranging for payments or pickups, saving searches or specific items and sharing posts elsewhere on Facebook.

What really sets Marketplace apart from competitors, though, is its ability to let users conduct sales in instantaneously and review profile information throughout the transaction.

With the Messenger integration, you can negotiate the offer and if you want more pictures, have questions, or need to clarify something about the sale item, you actually do this within a second as it depends on the sellers or buyer’s response seed.

This feature provides a legitimacy check since individuals can check each other’s profiles for information and trading history. The network of friends can also provide security if they can vouch for the seller.

Combining social networking with real-time sales is definitely a break through, but there is a problem about control of what users are posting.

However, users have already allegedly posted illegal items, such as adult services and drugs using the feature.

Facebook claimed this problem was a result of a “technical issue” and Director of Product Management Mary Ku said Facebook is: “Closely monitoring its systems to ensure it is properly identifying and removing violations before giving more people access to the  Marketplace.”