Facebook launched its classifieds Marketplace in October 2016 and has been building out content, categories and geographies since then. Yesterday the company announced major new third-party deals to bring more used car inventory into Marketplace.
The company named partnerships with Edmunds, Cars.com, Auction123, CDK Global and SOCIALDEALER. In the Edmunds case alone, that represents 4,000 local car dealers and 330,000 listings.
The tools and functionality in Marketplace allow car buyers to:
- search and browse car inventory (now including these local dealers).
- filter by key criteria (year, model and so on).
- interact with dealers through Facebook Messenger.
In addition to autos, Marketplace categories include housing, jobs, deals, tickets and products (shops). There’s no public data on user numbers or transactions, but Marketplace clearly has the potential to be a major player and source of leads and volume for key classifieds categories. It’s not a threat to eBay at this point but could be in the not-too-distant future.
Facebook launched Marketplace for SMB and peer-to-peer sellers but has expanded to include enterprise sellers, as the automotive partnerships illustrate.
