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> they are now getting into verticals

This is far from their first `vertical`. Events, groups, marketplace... Eventbrite/whatever is still here, meetup is still here, and craigslist is still here too.

Sure. But are any of those businesses really doing well these days? For the longest time facebook told businesses that advertised heavily on their platform that they had no intention of getting deep into verticals, that instead those businesses should build on top of the facebook "infrastructure". And for a while it was relatively true; now all the gloves are off. If you're growing and profitable, and working with consumers, facebook will be coming for you.

I know a bunch of independent sellers of various things who say that they are getting more sales from Facebook Marketplace than Craigslist

Not Craigslist tho.

With my recent move this was my experience. Everything listed on Craigslist and Facebook, every single sale was Facebook.

I'm in the process of a move/downsizing, near the DC area, and my experience is exactly the opposite. All the locals on Facebook waste my time with Messenger, and never follow through, whereas people on Craigslist actually show up with cash. I joined 10 local "yard sale" groups on FB plus Marketplace, posting everything in all of them plus CL, and all the sales are coming from CL. Facebook just seems to be full of flaky losers.

Interesting - I wonder if it varies by region. A few years back I had mixed luck with both in Seattle, my recent experience is in Bay area.

I do agree on Facebook there is more noise than I found on craigslist. I think this is because of the UX, Facebook makes it easy to send a false positive for interest whereas on craigslist it takes more effort and therefore reduces the signal to noise ratio for buyers who are actually interested.

I think that's quite possible. On FB, I've gotten a lot of "lookey loos" popping up and asking me questions on Messenger, usually "is this still available?". So I answer them and half the time never hear from them again.

With CL, they have to punch in a phone number, or use email to ask inane questions like that (which they do, just not as much).

My wife has moved entirely to FB Marketplace for buying/selling, because you can get a much better sense if the person you are transacting with is sketchy or not. This is a huge upside that FB can leverage.

The fact that FB has real identities, with history and a measurable "trustworthy" index, gives it a huge advantage that almost no one else has.

imho this has always been the ace up FB's sleeve in terms of monetization and justifying their market cap.

Yes, Craigslist is doing really well.

"Craigslist will generate revenue of almost $700 million this year [full year 2016], with a profit margin around 80 percent — making it the most profitable classified advertising site in the world, the AIM Group reports in its Global Classified Advertising Annual."

"it managed to increase revenue by 75 percent in 2016 over the estimated 2015 total"

https://aimgroup.com/2016/11/29/craigslist-revenue-soars-aga...

Story from May 2017 talking about how well they're doing:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2017/05/03/how-does-cra...

The AIM Group's long term chart on Craiglist's estimated revenue, year by year:

https://i.imgur.com/cAwd2T3.jpg

Obviously we'll see how Craigslist fairs over a longer period of time vs Facebook market. However, Craigslist is a free listing service for the typical user, as such Facebook is a modest threat - people can trivially list on both services.

Vast majority of that revenue is from job postings

A mate of mine here in Australia recently moved apartment and wanted to flip a whole heap of her stuff (bed frame, lounges, etc.) to downsize. She was using gumtree (the traditional 'I need to sell a lounge/fridge/etc. site used here) but was getting pretty poor responses. She then tried FB Marketplace and found it to be a huge gain in both quantity of responses (~10x) and their quality (people weren't offering her like 20% of what she listed it at).

I also see many uni kids flipping their textbooks and other small belongings on it, because it's really easy and right there in the app everyone looks at all the time. It also targets location, so uni kids living on campus sell directly to other uni kids living on campus and so exchanges become trivially easy.

It may not have disrupted the US market, but it's certainly had an impact elsewhere.

> She then tried FB Marketplace and found it to be a huge gain in both quantity of responses (~10x) and their quality (people weren't offering her like 20% of what she listed it at).

I offload items I don’t want anymore via Craigslist in the US. I try to give away or sell items at a low cost to reduce the hassle and time that I have to invest (a great deal is less likely to turn into a person who cancels at the last minute after I’ve set aside time to meet). For items with a cost, the majority of emails are insulting low bids.

Glad to know this isn’t a local / regional issue.

Interesting. I've heard about FB Marketplace and the other local selling groups, so because I'm moving out and downsizing too, I decided to try it in addition to Craigslist. I've sold a bunch of stuff so far, and while I've listed almost everything on both (on the FB side, I've used Marketplace and also about 10 different local "yard sale" groups that cover my location), as far as I can tell all my sales came from Craigslist. On the FB side, I've had a bunch of communications from totally flaky people who never follow through. The only good thing I can say about FB so far is that I haven't run into any scammers there, whereas they're common on CL, but they're easy to avoid: only deal in cash with people who show up in person, and ignore people who want to send cashier's checks and that kind of crap.

Events & groups were in Facebook since before it went mainstream. They're a core component, not a new vertical.

The marketplace features Facebook added to groups are a light support for how people were using groups anyway.

Dating site like features on Facebook, besides just sending messages, were always apps.

Well lets not just talk about North American markets.

To give an example, Facebook Marketplace has become a considerable threat for "Small Items for Sale" category in emerging markets where classified websites other than Craigslist are dominant.

With its strong user profile integration that keeps out fake sellers, Marketplace has become a huge sell in countries like India, Pakistan and UAE.

I am definitely not surprised if Facebook would be going in for a vertical approach. Messenger used to be a part of Facebook. It's a stand alone product for a while now with bots for virtually anything (sellers are using them to give out promo codes), a separate mobile app and even a web app.

However, I don't see this verticalization to necessarily happen as a non-Facebook experience though. For Instagram, it makes sense to keep it that way and not bring it inside Facebook. For Marketplace and Events, it might not be the case because it needs that strong network affect and makes Facebook work as a platform to find, do and participate in things.

You can also cite micro communities in United States. For example, college students use Facebook for anything from browsing memes to planning events to subletting their houses for the summer. It’s a pretty convenient ecosystem to tap into considering everybody’s already on Facebook (that was the original target demographic).

That's a good example and very common in Canada as well.

network affect? like in network feelings?

See this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect

This is particularly useful when trying to find new events per se. For example, I see a friend marking himself "interested" for a particular event on Facebook. I do the same and reach him out on Messenger to ask him / her to go together.

I have to stick to Facebook because one way or the other, it gives me an avenue to socialize because people I know are there, use it regularly and are contributor to the network effect.

We was making a joke out of your incorrect use of "affect" vs "effect"

Sorry, guilty as charged. Couldn't help myself.

Yes every market is different and needs to be conquered on its own. I'm living in Austria and FB Marketplace is being used but it's not as big (or good) as the existing willhaben.at or shpock.

Their marketplace, groups and events have took some marketshare in the country I live in (albeit a small one). For example, for cars, I relied on Facebook as most users moved there. Many events are now running on Facebook as they can "spam" users with the invites. It is not there yet adoption wise, but also their product is not up to the standards of eventbrite for example.

It’s the first vertical because the competition lost actual dollars off their share price because it.

they even tried Q&A for a brief period of time, and messenger of course

Marketplace did not yet take over local sites, but it's getting there for a lot of people. They hated having to move off facebook to some 'inconvenient site' (yes, indeed, many people find sites other than Facebook & Whatsapp very inconvenient to work with) to sell their stuff, while now it's an easy experience for them. I see it growing rapidly every day where I live (south of Spain). Considering many people are born into Facebook (the first (and often only) device they (will ever) own is a smartphone and that they use for Facebook and Whatsapp), it is very natural that many people just stay in that eco system and prefer never to leave because it's so convenient.

Dating might be seen as a bit too much though; many people (for whatever reasons they have for it) prefer to keep their dating life away from their normal interactions. It depends on how it works, but it seems unlikely it will be seperated from the normal experience which I think will be a big hurdle for many. Then again, maybe it's already known and fixed as this is the first time I read about it.

Not sure where you're from, but meeting and dating people on Facebook is extremely common and normal in US

How does that work? You can't message someone you're not friends with can you?

Here it's common to ask a girl/boy for their Facebook once you have met, but meeting someone on Facebook seems difficult. Would you do it through a group?

People just add mutual friends who look cute maybe at thw recommendation of a friend, they start messenging each other, boy asks girl out, rest you can use imagination

Safer for a girl than meeting a rando off tinder or okc in terms of online dating

> You can't message someone you're not friends with can you?

Yes you can. I don't have any 'friends' on Facebook but have a long list of Messenger contacts and groups.

That's probably more useful information to Facebook than some nebulous graph of people I vaguely know. Messenger contacts are those with whom I actively engage.

My post says where I live, and for younger people that might be the case too, I wouldn't know. But then how do you meet new people and what does the new dating feature add?

It literally says it in the comment: south of Spain. As someone from the east of Spain I totally agree with tluyben2 experience

No shit sherlock, I’m pointing out that Spain, a small market, is not representative of everything

Edit: should also point out you might just be a neckbeard or fogey and may be unaware of your more socially aware fellow spaniards using Facebook to date

The reason my circle of friends never really used Tinder is Facebook. So I can not really see how this could ever take off.

Then again i never saw anyone using the shopping feature with success, so i know it's all just point of view.

I find that I use Facebook Groups and Events more than Meetup.

Facebook Marketplace is really good for niche buying and selling, since you can have a group dedicated to specific topics.

And jobs, a huge threat to job sites.

Almost certainly the next big vertical stop for Facebook. It's what I would do.

Don't forget they have an enormous amount of data from years of Tinder integration.

Would fb get anything other than who used the app from that?

Considering they already have relashionship data (x is in a relationship with y, x is now single, etc) - on which they might be able to predict matching data; the other missing thing is knowing who might want to date. Which I guess correlates pretty well with "installs tinder".

The biggest problem is fitting these verticals in to look and feel of Facebook. This is actually lot harder than you think because the core business requires that you still need to be sharply focused on news feed. Perhaps this is the reason lot of verticals that already exists hasn't driven competitors in to extinction. They have to figure out the design (like Yahoo did in its early days with simple but prominent tabs which Google followed up with its own simple but prominent tabs in search results) so people get used to think of FB as collection of verticals as opposed to place to go read news feed - but this would be a significant change in strategy and business bottom line.

100% agree with this - it's one of the main reasons (other than ad payouts) why they're not massively competing with YouTube just yet. News Feed is their core, but it's also what's been holding them back from really destroying other markets - the discoverability mechanics (you never know what's coming up, so keep scrolling...) of the News Feed are a blessing and a curse.

When they break themselves away from this (which they arguably have with their attempts to embed more in Messenger - I can foresee a future test being you subscribing to video channels/news brands in Messenger and having bots push the latest vids out, history repeats itself), and open up a few more interaction mechanics, things could change.

There's also the "Eugenics" angle here too. :(

If Facebook gains access to people's medical data (as Google definitely has), they could literally use this "dating feature" as a high level population breeding program.

With the level of ethics they've displayed so far - practically none - it wouldn't be super surprising to find them doing it. :/

It would actually be surprising to find them doing it. Even from a business perspective, their other breaches of ethics (and privacy) all made them money. Large-scale eugenics wouldn't make money for FB, at least not in the next 18 years.

Hmmm, I disagree.

It's not at all hard to think of at least a few countries whose leadership would happily engage them for this.

They'd be the one's paying money for Facebook to do "targeted dating influenced by specific factors". ie genetics.

Depending upon the verification/validation of results they want, it's probably not an 18 year wait. Initial data would be what... school grades entered into centralised system (guessing)? Higher year level grades, aptitude tests, uni/college (etc) would be follow on ones down the track.

Anyway, the point doesn't seem far fetched at all. And Facebook + medical data would be right there. :/

Reminded me of Chris Dixon's S-Curve

https://medium.com/@cdixon/why-decentralization-matters-5e3f...

Why did they pick an S-curve? Why not log or linear? I couldn't really tell from the article.

At the time scales considered, world population/market size is more or less constant.

That means exponential growth (a reasonable guess at what the curve looks like, initially) has to plateau, eventually.

2010 called, they wanted to let you know Facebook has been going vertical for a long time.

They haven't even been secretive about it. Look at their last big vertical push: Facebook marketplace.

They're just trying to follow Google's footsteps to become a full Internet portal. That's why Zuck tried so hard to bring Facebook Zero to India and Africa, and why Zuck is kissing Jinping's feet.

They want nothing short of complete market domination.

> So anyone building a consumer focused business that relies on a graph should be pretty paranoid about what the future may hold, just as anyone in the retail/ecommerce world is already scared of amazon.

Just don't go after generic solutions, but choose a niche.

People are usually careful to not use too many services from the same provider to not give the provider too much data. This used to be true at least, and was the argument heard when Google+ launched.

The web is contracting and consolidating. Whether that is good or bad is debatable. Its the natural course of capitalism to monopolize and we're seeing it on the web. How long before we see the first attempt to break one up? Would it even matter?

I stopped using Facebook several years ago, and it was already a dating app at that time. That was more or less the point of the thing.

How is this new?