Facebook tests Buy & Sell in Auckland

9 years ago
/ News
/ By Jeremy Templer

Will Facebook succeed in New Zealand where eBay and Gumtree have failed?

In a test we imagine will be closely watched by Trade Me, the social media site is trialling a new “Buy and Sell” feature with Facebook users in Auckland and Sydney.

The “Buy & Sell” button appears under Favorites in the left-hand navigation panel. Click on the button and you’re taken to a feed of all items available for sale in your area — Auckland, in our case. You can filter items by product category (such as Computers & Electronics; Furniture; Appliances; and Cars, Boats & Motors) but not by price or listing date. Or you can do a search.

Mashable Australia reports a Facebook spokeperson as saying “We are in the very early stages of testing a new way for more people to easily discover, buy, and sell items with other people on Facebook.”

Why should you care?

New Zealanders already spend much of their online time on Trade Me and Facebook, and we think Buy & Sell may further increase Facebook time. Will we spend any less time on Trade Me? Probably not.

That said, Buy & Sell is in the early stages of testing and, when finally made available to all Facebook users, could well be a much different and more compelling offering than that we see today.

Other search marketing news this week:

The latest news about web marketing, SEO, PPC Advertising & Web Analytics. But only the stuff that matters from a New Zealand perspective. Click here to get this delivered to your inbox each Monday.

If you found this useful, please tell your friends.

About the Author Jeremy Templer

Jeremy is a Partner and Senior Consultant at SureFire. Jeremy has been working in search since 1996, when he joined the Australian search engine, LookSmart. After relocating to San Francisco, he was instrumental in the development of the company’s paid search ad platform. At analytics company Coremetrics (now owned by IBM) he established an in-house search agency managing campaigns for Coremetrics clients such as Macy’s, Bass Pro and Lands End. At Acxiom he managed members of the pioneering SEO firm Marketleap and worked with clients such as Capital One, American General Finance and Kaiser Health. Joining SureFire in 2009, he is the head of Paid Search Advertising and oversees the delivery of AdWords and other PPC campaigns. He also helps clients make sense of their website data.