Facebook Users Can Now Sell to Members of Social Circles

Oodle, which powers the Facebook Marketplace and lets users post items for sale across Facebook, launched a new feature this week that allows users to refine their selling activity. Facebook users can now easily sell, give or ask within specific social circles within the Marketplace.

For example, someone could offer their extra tickets to friends and co-workers inside their social circles. Social circles are more commonly associated with Google Plus (G+) than with Facebook, but Facebook users can create new circles with Oodle.

Oodle CEO Craig Donato told EcommerceBytes, "Friends are helpful, but you really want to talk about your extended social circles, which includes your neighbors, coworkers, and your classmates."

On a place like Craigslist or eBay, you're posting to the public, but "when you post to our site, you can also let everyone see it, but you can also post to these smaller circles," Donato said.

Small businesses using Oodle's Pro platform are also included in the commerce graph through their circle of fans. Marketplace users can now see if anyone within their Circles is a fan of a specific business, adding a level of trust to the social commerce experience.

The new social circles features is available in Facebook and on Oodle.com. "By adding these new social circles into Marketplace, we enable social commerce to work like it does in the real world," Donato said. "We turn to a variety of people within our local community - friends as well as neighbors, co-workers and classmates."

This expanded social graph of connections is based on Marketplace's large user base which contains over 26 million registered users. Oodle is also taking full advantage of Facebook's Open Graph publishing tools to more richly promote what friends are posting in the Marketplace.