The island nation Mauritius, home to 1.3 million, might just be the future of micro-business commerce on Facebook.
Recently, Facebook discovered that one out of four locals belong to a “group” buying and selling items. Facebook groups were not designed for this, explained P.J. Linarducci, Head of Payments and Commerce at Facebook. Speaking before an audience at the CardLinx forum in San Francisco, Linarducci shared that a “sold” button was finally added to archive users’ posts instead of deleting them.
Could this be the first step towards Facebook’s next big play? Facebook has a huge opportunity in facilitating local person to person sales. While established players like Craigslist currently dominate the space, Facebook could change that overnight. That’s because the social network could create immediate trust between buyer and sellers among its massive user base. Both parties can see shared friends, where the other lives, and determine what kind of person they’re dealing with. In Mauritius, this trust makes buyers and sellers quicker to transact.
If Facebook could create a thriving marketplace by accident, imagine what the social network could do intentionally. Facebook has strong incentive to become a market; specifically to capture transactional data. With purchasing behaviors and card information, Facebook could become even more targeted with its advertisements. Coming off a wave of success in generating mobile ad revenue, this could be the social network’s next big play.
