Over the years Facebook has evolved to be a platform not just for friends, family and businesses to share, but groups provide a platform for sales. Almost every sizable city and town will have Buy, Swap and Sell type page, or often pages where at a local level, you can make quick money for trading your unused items.
From phones to furniture, these groups are flooded with people trying to offload their goods. It’s easy to understand why, just snap a photo, add a price and description and post to the group. Minutes later, interested buyers respond to your post, maybe with a counter offer and after settling on a price you direct message to arrange delivery.
The system works quite well at the moment, but an update to the Facebook app is helping the process evolve. If a group is listed as a Buy/Sell group, users will have the opportunity to hit the ‘Sell’ button and enter the details in dedicated fields for the title, price, location (optional) and description (optional). Attach your photos and you’re done.
The key difference here is that this now makes the presentation of a sale item consistent every time. You don’t need to go searching through an overly detailed description to find the part where the seller lists the actual price, which is often the biggest determining factor of wether you’ll buy or not. The second is how far away the product is, this is where location comes in, this isn’t you’re physical address, but more like the suburb or town the seller is in. If the buyer isn’t prepared to travel, then this is incredibly important, just like if the seller isn’t prepared to deliver.
It also opens the possibility of search / filter tools. Without dedicated fields to search on, Facebook algorithms would have to search through the description text to identify the necessary details. With the information separated into dedicated fields, it’d be menial to produce a list of items in your location, or price range.
Facebook is one step closer to being eBay.
Via Re/code
