Ethan Gaskill, a 29-year-old content creator, starts each day the same way: “When I wake up in the morning (most people get on their phone and start checking Instagram), I check Facebook Marketplace.”
With his Los Angeles home furnished almost exclusively with second-hand items and a TikTok with more than 220,000 followers interested in his thrift shopping, Gaskill believes the shopping platform is a reliable source of hidden gems: $1,000. Herman Miller lamp and pendant he received $400; a $5,000 bed by the same designer that he bought for 20% of the original price; and a $4,000 Founders mid-century chest of drawers that Gaskill bought for $800.
“It gives people the opportunity to bring really rare items or just unique items into their home that they wouldn’t otherwise have if they couldn’t make it to a flea market or estate sale. – said Gaskill Luck.
Facebook Marketplace has become more than just a reliable source of information about thrift stores in Los Angeles. It has become a real contender to compete with well-established e-commerce sites. Facebook has grown to 3.07 billion monthly active users (MAU) as of the end of 2023, up 3% from a year earlier. Of those, up to 40%, or 1.2 billion, are active users who shop on Marketplace, according to a March report. Capital One Shopping report.
Online second-hand marketplace Meta is already challenging industry goliaths. Years ago, the market eclipsed the number of Craigslist MAUs, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated in 2018 that 800 million MAU of the trading platformcompared to 55 million Craigslist visitors in 2017. In contrast, Amazon had 310 million monthly users in 2023. for the technical report, about a quarter of Marketplace MAUs. According to Marketplace, it is the second most popular site for buying used items after Ebay. Statistics report for 2022.
“This is an area of growth,” said Charles Lindsey, assistant professor of marketing at the University at Buffalo School of Management. Luck. “I wouldn’t be surprised if in three to five years it actually overtakes Ebay.”
Amazon and Ebay did not respond to Luckrequest for comments.
From online garage sale to e-commerce giant
Marketplace’s astronomical growth is largely due to the fact that the platform is easy to use and already linked to a site that many people are already members of, Lindsey said.
“The trust factor is there because it’s associated with Facebook,” he said. “It has an easy to use interface. It’s integrated with Facebook Messenger, so you can easily switch between each other.”
Marketplace, launched in 2016, was originally a way to facilitate neighbor-to-neighbor sales, with most users offering a used item for sale at a reasonable price, and buyers picking up the item and coordinating with the seller via Facebook Messenger for pickup and payment. But Marketplace has grown into a huge e-commerce platform that powers one in three Facebook users in the United States. by 2018. Marketplace has grown dramatically during the pandemic, thanks to its growing reliance on e-commerce and the supply chain, as well as shipping delays that have hampered traditional shopping.
“We’re seeing everyone thrive, from artisans making goods by hand to woodworkers to car salespeople,” Deb Liu, founder and then-vice president of Marketplace, said Modern retail in 2021.
By then, Marketplace had become a boon not only for budget-conscious shoppers, but also for small businesses looking for unique sales opportunities. Springfield, Missouri-based Beautiful Fight Woodworking generated $168,000 of its $266,000 revenue in 2020 solely from marketplace sales.
Of course, the platform is not without serious problems, especially as scammers and bot accounts have proliferated throughout the site, giving well-meaning shoppers a hard time. One user from South Carolina said in February that he was cheated out of $18,000 after listing his 2016 Audi for sale on Marketplace. 2022 thinkmonkey survey of 1,000 Britons found that one in six had been scammed on the platform.
“What happens offline often makes its way online, and that unfortunately includes fraud,” Ryan Daniels, Meta spokesman, said Wired. Meta said it works “aggressively to quickly identify, disable and block fraudulent activity and associated accounts.”
Gen Z’s New Favorite Social Networks
With its rise, Marketplace has attracted a generation of young people who have largely turned their backs on Facebook.
“I look at it as a social media app,” said Dre Vez, a 25-year-old content creator. Luck.
Wez spends six to 12 hours a day on Marketplace, where he makes a living by “trolling” sellers, asking them to test a product via voice notes before uploading interactions to TikTok for his 755,000 followers.
He sees Marketplace as not only a place for entertaining videos, but also a true social media tool for Gen Z and Millennials because it is dynamic and highly stimulating.
“It’s being able to have multiple interactions in a short period of time where I can go to Facebook Marketplace, find a bike, connect with seven to 10 different people and have all these conversations. at the same time,” he said.
Even on days when he can’t find a good deal, Wez finds jokes on the site. Vendors were able to offer used nail clippers, toilet brushes, plungers – even a face-shaped Dorito that sells for $10,000, he recalls.
Meta turned its attention to its enthusiastic young users. Although the popularity of Facebook among teenagers decreased Following TikTok’s rise in popularity, Facebook now has more than 40 million daily young users aged 18 to 29 in the US and Canada, a three-year high, with one in four using the Marketplace, Mehta said. Luck.
According to second-hand goods connoisseur Gaskill, who checks Marketplace five to 10 times a day, the platform is attractive to young people because it appeals to their desire for independence, To save moneyAnd take care of nature against the stress of mass production and freight transport.
“Given the economic circumstances and also the mindset of Generation Z, they love uniqueness and self-expression,” he said. “But they also really like to find things at a good price.”
Find room to grow
But just because Meta boasts a growing fanbase for its Marketplace platform doesn’t mean it’s a profitable division of the company. Meta did not respond to LuckPlease comment on how it makes money through the Marketplace, but marketing professor Lindsay suggests the company benefits from transaction fees with sellers, as well as a greater emphasis on advertising on the website.
“In general, the more likely someone is to use Facebook Marketplace, the more likely they are to also go to Facebook that many times a month,” he said. “Facebook then capitalizes on that by allowing companies to pay for ads, which then end up in my feed, end up in your feed.”
The EU’s European Commission said in December 2022 that Facebook and Marketplace were linked to each other and were using data in a way that violated EU competition rules, according to the report December 2023 SEC filing..
The marketplace is partly an important piece of Facebook’s financial puzzle because its local exchanges are inexpensive, according to Sucharita Kodali, a retail industry analyst at research firm Forrester, especially compared to Ebay, which requires extensive international infrastructure.
“This is a huge volume of transactions,” she told Fortune. “With this volume of transactions comes some sort of necessary investment in automation, customer service, seller management, seller tools, etc.”
While Facebook Marketplace doesn’t need a complex system to manage local transactions, that also means it likely doesn’t make as much money as its e-commerce competitors. In fact, Kodali went so far as to call Marketplace an “anti-trading” platform because it is so full of “don’t buy anything” groups and peer-to-peer exchanges. She took the same position as Lindsay, arguing that the financial value of the platform is that it helps better target advertising to active users.
“It’s not really about, ‘Let’s make money from the number of posts we see in the marketplace section,’” she said.
Marketplace’s virtual garage sale atmosphere and sense of community associated with the platform may not generate Meta billions of dollars, but it is what keeps users coming back to the site.
“You never know when the next amazing thing will come along,” Gaskill said. “This is the most interesting thing. That’s kind of what makes it exciting.”