If you notice a sudden drop in used textbook listings on Amazon or couches with 'minor beer stains' from Craigslist and your local newspaper, you can likely thank Facebook's introduction of the Marketplace. PC Magazine has the scoop on this new social network-infused classifieds ad system, which is free of charge and should be available to all users by the end of this week after a gradual rollout.
Keeping things simple (at least for now), Facebook's Marketplace has only four categories: For Sale, Housing, Jobs and Other. Sub-categories all for fine-tuning a listing, but Facebook has also taken care to allow users to specify who gets to see what. Ads can be listed publicly or only for friends and networks, and users who are not friends with a lister can only see the ad - not the lister's profile. Unfortunately, it appears that Facebook decided not to integrate any of the online payment systems, which would have offered them a serious advantage over competing services like Craigslist, MySpace and, in a way, even eBay.
As this new feature is slowly rolling out to all users this week, you should notice a news bulleting once you sign in, as well as a new Marketplace entry in the left Facebook sidebar once you can get to listing and buying.
