Facebook's new classifieds

The US’s 6th most high-traffic site introduces classified ads today. Facebook’s new ad section, called “Marketplace,” “will allow users to create classified listings in four categories: housing; jobs; for sale, where users can list things like concert tickets and used bikes; and “other,” a catch-all that could include things like solicitations for rides home for the holidays,” the New York Times reports. Users of the 22 million-member site will probably like the privacy and delivery options built in. They can show an ad to friends only on their profile or send them out in a “feed” (“the automatic updates that appear when users log in to the site”). They can also choose to make their ads available to everyone on their network (their high school, college, company, or regional network that’s closed off to Facebook users in other networks). The emphasis is on privacy right now, with no anonymous classifieds, Facebook says, though the company might eventually charge for broader ad distribution. MySpace has had classifieds for nearly a year and Friendster has announced it will add them.