Pitched the idea for Facebook Marketplace in 2009

2. Engaging Facebook active users

People use Facebook widely and frequently, often multiple times a day. Adding a local and shipped commerce solution only extended the value of the app and the things that could be done with it.

3. Integrating with Messenger

Being integrated with...

1. Focusing on trust

Buying and selling face-to-face meant that trust was a huge factor, especially when it came to bulky items that required people to meet up in person. We sold our minivan on Marketplace, and we knew we had to meet with buyers. My husband reviewed the profiles of everyone...

Many early research studies, more than half of people studied in many countries cited Facebook as a place they had bought or sold things. This was less common in Western markets, which made it a blind spot for many of those at the company.

We decided to set up a way to allow group admins to opt into becoming classified commerce groups. This allowed us to track organic behaviors on the platform. We found that many more people were part of Facebook Groups communities that had been set up specifically for buying, selling, and trading ...

I was a member of multiple mom groups, where people bought and sold all sorts of things. Kids generate a lot of used goods, many of which are insanely expensive to buy new. I also had friends in Asia who talked about how meaningful buying and selling in groups was to them, and how Facebook wa...

Facebook Marketplace is the world’s second-largest marketplace, in terms of monthly active users, behind only Amazon. It’s ahead of Alibaba, Walmart, eBay, Taobao, and has quietly left the once-unconquerable Craigslist in the dust.

He offered the opportunity to our team and the Video team first. As other teams began requesting tabs, including Groups, Pages, and News, the team that managed the navigation within the app had to create rules about how tabs could be used and how the channels could be leveraged. This led to the d...

Almost every two-sided marketplace struggles with bringing on enough supply and/or bringing on enough demand. Surprisingly, Facebook didn’t. We already had both buyers and sellers, but we weren’t succeeding in making the connection between the two.

The launch of Marketplace happened on October 4, 2016.

Needless to say, it wasn’t pretty. A small bug in the fraud queues resulted in a massive flood of violating items. We were able to get it cleaned up quickly by reinstating the rules, but it was an inauspicious start, to say the least.

1. Follow the data

From the start, we noticed that some of the most popular items on Marketplace were cars and rentals, which surprised us. We did not realize that there was such demand for these big-ticket items online.

2. Device matters

While the product started primarily for mobile, we realized that to be competitive, we needed to add a desktop version. This was important for larger purchases and would make listing easier for high-volume sellers. 

We had to stay on top of new issues as they arose but also keep the team innovating and building features that customers expected. This is the constant push-pull of building a product that balances the needs of buyers and sellers while preventing bad actors and negotiating the external environmen...