Facebook, Inc. To Take On Craigslist Head On

Settling down and maintaining its momentum is clearly not the social media giant's thing, it wants to grab every opportunity that comes its way.

Facebook, Inc. the social media giant is looking to monetize its huge user base by introducing a “Local Market Button” for shopping. There are over 900 million users on certain Facebook groups and most of these group count local commerce. The social media network will first test this Local Market Button with the help of this trending local commerce business and place items for sales in each Group. The company is aiming at making it a user friendly, easy to browse and easily searchable interface. With having over 1.55 billion users on the social media website, it is further looking to monetize and facilitate e-commerce to its colossal user base. For these commerce groups, Facebook, earlier in February introduced a number of features for the users that would easily allow them to list items on sale in an easier manner. The added advantage of new feature on the website gave the company a better picture of how users were conducting business on the Buy and Sell Groups and how they were categorizing their items on the social media. The new feature allows the seller to enter its location along with the item that they have listed in a certain group and through a buyer’s GPS the company will be able to show him what items and sellers are nearby to him. The whole idea basically works on locations of the buyers and sellers, quite similar to that of Craigslist. Although Craigslist has always been on top of the charts when it comes to connecting local buyers and sells however the social media giant now thinks that with its enormous user base it can definitely perform better. Additionally, the social media site is leaving no stone unturned and grabbing every opportunity to grow and make more money. That is the new philosophy the social media giant seems to be working on; continuously making products available on its website for its 1.5 billion users. It is also encouraging local commerce through Facebook Pages, through which a lot of people are conducting business and ultimately the website generates profits through Facebook Ads. To further grow its Local Market Button idea, the company should focus on giving a nudge to its sellers. This move would not be too hard for the company has it has previously managed to convince over 2.5 million small and middle level business to advertise of its popular platform. The company has done so by asking the user every time it makes a post on its pages whether they would like to promote that post and reach to a wider audience. This new feature by the company definitely beats Craigslist on which a user would need to update his post and try to keep it in the top listings. The social media giant will clearly be successful in taking this one too.