Facebook Marketplace Debuts Referrals for Home Service

Table of Content

• Featured
• websites for small business owners to sell stuff online
• How Facebook Marketplace Home Services Work
• EU warns Meta over Facebook Marketplace  competition breach
• Meta Hit With EU Antitrust Charges Over Marketplace Service
• Solo is the easiest way for small businesses to pay and get paid.
• Tips and best practices for selling your products on Facebook Marketplace

When you open the Facebook app on your phone, you should now see a shop icon at the bottom. When you tap on the icon, you’ll find photos of items for sale, and you can filter your results by location, category, and price. Much like other online marketplaces, you can further simplify your results by selecting categories like Household, Electronics, and Apparel.

Today, the company introduced a new feature that lets you shop for handymen, house cleaners, plumbers, and other "home services" directly from Facebook's Marketplace. The feature itself offers more than just a bunch of listings for users to sort through. “More people ask for recommendations related to home services on Facebook in the US than any other topic. Since the beginning of the year, millions of people have asked their friends for suggestions related to home services, such as house cleaners, plumbers and contractors,” Deb Liu, vice president of Facebook’s Marketplace, said in a release.

Featured

Facebook Marketplace will have 100,000+ home service providers listed along with location, ratings, reviews, and background checks (vetted by the third-party providers). Providers won’t be charged by Facebook to participate in Marketplace. They just need to be signed up with one of the three partners to feature their services and generate leads. As of last year, Marketplace had been growing at a rate of 18 million new listings per month. Facebook users use Marketplace each month to buy or sell across the 71 countries where it’s live.

When you are satisfied, click “Boost Post Now” and monitor your post as it starts to show up for more and more potential customers. This makes it a great opportunity for businesses to sell their offerings and gain new business. But there are some caveats that business owners should be aware of. The information on this website is for informational purposes only; it is deemed accurate but not guaranteed.

websites for small business owners to sell stuff online

"We will continue to work with regulatory authorities to demonstrate that our product innovation is pro-consumer and pro-competitive," Mr Lamb added. Europe has hit Facebook owner Meta with a complaint that its Marketplace classified service is unfair to competitors. By tying its main social media site to Marketplace, it has a "substantial distribution advantage" over rivals, the EU Commission wrote in a press release. Expected to roll out in the U.S over the "coming weeks," the feature lets you shop for services and chat directly with the businesses or individuals about the work you need to get done.

The home service pros who respond can then communicate with the customer through Messenger to follow up on the lead. The CMA revealed back in August that it would be proceeding with its case against Meta, and the EC is now following suit. Many home service professionals already have dedicated Facebook business pages. But now they can leverage the social media platform by engaging with people searching for services in Marketplace. More than 800 million people use Marketplace each month globally.

How Facebook Marketplace Home Services Work

Sign up for our newsletter to get the inside scoop on what traders are talking about — delivered daily to your inbox. The European Union is investigating Meta over a potential breach in antitrust policies. Facebook Marketplace was launched in 2016 and is used in 70 countries to buy and sell items. But if Facebook is concerned about these issues, it isn't showing, as the company has continued to introduce new features at a steady clip over the past few months.

There’s the general “no drugs, drug paraphernalia, alcohol, gambling, sexual content” rule, but there are some other items that Facebook has listed as prohibited in its Commerce Policies. First, create a post about your services that you can boost to new audiences. Video content has the opportunity to get more placements and it generally has higher engagement rates, but you can reach Marketplace with general images and text too. Boosting a post is a quick way to set up an ad on Facebook without having to set up an Ads Manager account. Facebook has several different options for advertising your content on its platform, but one way that you can get placements for your ads in the Marketplace is by boosting a post from your Facebook page. When you post something to sell on Marketplace, people can use Facebook Messenger to ask you questions about the item.

EU warns Meta over Facebook Marketplace  competition breach

Sources familiar with the matter last month told Reuters the EU antitrust regulators were drawing up charges against Meta over its use of customer data and the tying of its classified advertisements service to its social network. In addition, the Commission found that Meta imposes imposes unfair trading conditions on competitors that advertise on Facebook or Instagram. That essentially allows it to use "ads-related data derived from competitors for the benefit of Facebook Marketplace," it said. The practices, if confirmed, would infringe on EU rules that prohibit the abuse of a dominant market position. The EU has the power to impose a fine of up to 10 percent of Meta's annual revenue and prohibit the behavior. Once signed up with one of the three Facebook partners, home service providers will be able to post service listings in Facebook Marketplace Home Services.

From Facebook, customers tab over to Marketplace and then scroll over to Marketplace Services. Facebook users will be able to browse organized topics like “Deep Clean Your Home” or “Get Your Backyard Summer Ready” and select the service they need. After customers provide information about their project and zip code; a list of local verified service professionals is provided and ready to help. Customers also have the option of requesting single or multiple quotes. Once the customer has selected the right professional, the customer sends out a project request to the provider. Messenger notifies the customer when a service professional has responded.

The new services experience begins rolling out today, and it will be available across the US over the coming weeks. Facebook's Marketplace will now let you find and book home-improvement professionals. The European Commission first launched a probe into Meta in June 2021 to investigate "possible anticompetitive conduct." As a result, the Facebook-parent company could face up to $11.8 billion in fines. A lunchtime summary of content highlights on the Irish Examiner website. News and analysis on business, money and jobs from Munster and beyond by our expert team of business writers.

Facebook said it decided to launch the service after it discovered that its U.S. users were, more than anything else, requesting recommendations for in-home services. You can find a plumber, a cleaning service or someone to help with a construction project. "More people ask for recommendations related to home services on Facebook in the US than any other topic," Deb Liu, head of Facebook Marketplace, said in a blog post announcing the new service. The so-called statement of objections the commission issued on Monday is a formal step in EU investigations that isn't a final judgment.

And we recommend that you don’t even try, because the more you try to do something against Facebook’s policies, the more you risk getting your privileges on Facebook revoked. When they see a company whose services and profile match what they’re looking for, they can submit a request for a quote through Facebook’s Messenger app. That means if you’re a member of Handy, the customer will still pay Handy, and Handy will pay you, just like normal. If you’re a member of HomeAdvisor, you will still pay the same fee per lead from Marketplace as you do when someone finds you on HomeAdvisor, just like normal. The only things that are different are where your services are listed and how consumers find and book you. Sign Up NowGet this delivered to your inbox, and more info about our products and services.

After that, the EC has the power to instruct that the company stops doing what it’s doing, while it can also impose a fine of up to 10% of its global turnover. There is no specific legal deadline in place for such antitrust investigations to conclude. Karissa was Mashable's Senior Tech Reporter, and is based in San Francisco. She covers social media platforms, Silicon Valley, and the many ways technology is changing our lives. Her work has also appeared in Wired, Macworld, Popular Mechanics, and The Wirecutter. In her free time, she enjoys snowboarding and watching too many cat videos on Instagram.