Inside Facebook

Facebook Marketplace, the Facebook classifieds application that’s now built and managed by Oodle, is introducing new sharing features designed to make it easier to post classified listings to your profile. Facebook Marketplace currently attracts about 1.9 million monthly active users to find and share listings with friends.

When Oodle took over Marketplace in March, the company took a new approach to the app, making it much more focused on sharing than purely browsing items in your local area. The new “Shout” feature adds another way to share by publishing items you find to your Wall and the News Feed. Depending on the link you click – “Like it!” or “Check it out!” or “Should I buy this?” – the story will be pre-populated with a comment, which you can of course customize.

In general, classifieds has been one of the more challenging areas for social app developers to capitalize on over the last few years. It will be interesting to see whether Facebook Marketplace users will be giving out “Shouts” generously.