Facebook now lets you buy and sell stuff in groups

Facebook has announced new features for Facebook Groups designed to make it possible for members of “For Sale” groups to buy and sell. These new features will roll out to Facebook For Sale Groups globally in the coming months across iOS, Android and web.

The features allow Group members to choose the “Sell” feature when creating a post in a For Sale group. Furthermore, members can add descriptions of what they are selling, including a price and a pick up/ delivery location. Sellers can also mark posts as ‘Available’ or ‘Sold’ and easily view their catalogue of previous items sold.

At present, members in the “For Sale” groups can only post photos and text descriptions of their items. The addition of the “Sell” feature will go a long way to simplify the transaction process. For one, members will now have full information on an item, its description, location and if an item is still available.

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There is no doubt that Facebook Group has not had the traction that Facebook would have hoped for and the new features, in addition to Facebook trying to be the stop for everything, are to aid with that. By introducing features into the app, Facebook is trying to cast its lure people who perhaps would not have bothered with downloading yet another app from Facebook. To draw comparisons between Messenger and Facebook Group gives an understanding of how the app is performing. The app currently has between one and five million installs on Google Play and Messenger has somewhere between 500-million and a billion installs.

The new features essentially make Facebook Group app an ecommerce stop for people looking to buy things. With these new features For Sale Groups can now be mentioned in the same breath as Craigslist for its local selling ability, or even eBay.

Facebook has said that it will introduce more features in the For Sale Groups that will allow for easy connecting, browsing and searching items.

There is no mention by Facebook about aiding the members with the delivery of the items people sell to their buyers but this would be amongst other things a way for Facebook to make this app quite convenient.