Facebook pushes further into eBay, Craigslist 'for sale' space

When you want to buy something gently used, you might turn to a site like eBay, or take your chances with Craigslist. Recently, Facebook began venturing into this territory, formalizing the buy and sell experience via groups. A novel idea, but ultimately a contained environment within your Facebook experience. A new discovery shows Facebook is trying to peel those 'for sale' groups away from the shadows and bring them to your main page, showing you a list of all items for sale in groups you belong to.

An option named 'all sales groups' is in testing, and shows you items for sale across all groups you belong to.

You can also search for items in your groups, or in those that are public. You can filter those results based on categories.

Via The Next Web, we learn the feature is currently being beta tested, though it's not clear if Facebook is just seeding it randomly or sampling a dedicated audience for feedback.

Facebook's initiative in the 'for sale' space is fledgling, having only been released in February to groups who opt-in. It was largely seen as a formal way for groups to buy and sell goods, which they were doing anyway.

Facebook takes no part in the sale of items; they don't process payments, and won't pry into those who may be doing business there. What users have is little more than a template for making their items more presentable for sale, and now a way to find items they may want to purchase.

Source: The Next Web