Facebook has recently entered into competition with eBay after launching a classified ad site called Facebook Marketplace. Working in a similar way to household names such as eBay or Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace allows its users to list localised adverts online for things they want to buy or sell. Regarding the launch, Facebook referred to the pages on its site that are already set up in order to buy and sell locally, saying that “more than 450 million people visit buy and sell groups each month”. Whilst eBay sold over 20 billion US dollars' worth of goods in 2015, and Craigslist received 50 billion page views worldwide, Facebook is hoping its huge audience and significant resources will disrupt the market. However, according to Jan Dawson, the chief analyst at Jackdaw Research, the social media site may struggle due to the required “mental shift” of having to make Facebook become about “dealing with strangers”.Â
