Facebook Marketplace

Facebook added a new feature to their site today - Marketplace. It works as a online classifieds similar to Craigslist. It has a couple of unique features: items are listed as part of your Network making listings more local to you, you can view items that are being sold by just your contacts and it adds "6 degrees of separation" to any listing telling you if the seller is a friend of a friend, etc.

This is definitely a departure from Facebook's normal operations. I find that a lot of people are already starting to worry about the creeping commercialism and lack of privacy with Facebook and wonder if this new feature will continue to foster those fears. This could however, be a decent niche player in classifieds, in particular with student products such as used textbooks and student services.