Facebook Marketplace expands into home services
Last week, the social network made its first move into the home services market by launching a new feature to enable users in the US to browse Facebook Marketplace for thousands of home service professionals. The new feature will allow users to see the professionals’ ratings, reviews, credentials and location; and request and compare quotes directly through the social network. Suppliers will be listed in a new Marketplace Services section within the Marketplace function, and all communications will take place over Messenger. This move is the latest in a series of updates for the function, as Facebook aims to position itself as a competitor to online marketplaces such as Craigslist.
Facebook launches new tools for Group admins Facebook has rolled out a wave of new features for one of its most popular functions, Groups (which boasts more than 1.4 billion monthly users) as it aims to make it easier for admins to manage their communities. The new updates include a dedicated online education portal, more tools to manage group posts, enhanced community moderation tools, and “customer support with answers and help provided by a real person”. The new customer service offering, which is currently only available to some English and Spanish speaking users, will enable admins to send issues to Facebook and get a response within one business day. The customer service tool will also aim to increase dialogue between the platform and admins, helping to crowdsource new ideas for future tools and updates.
Instagram lets users mute their friends Instagram is finally rolling out one of its most long overdue features, Mute – which will allows users to stop friends and people they follow from appearing in their feed. Users who choose to mute people will still be able to view their profile, and can unmute them at any time, and will offer a nicer alternative to unfollowing a close friend or family member whose holidays snaps have just become that little bit much.
StumbleUpon announces plans to close down Social content discovery platform, StumbleUpon has announced it will close down “over the next couple of months”. It was one of the earliest social content-sharing platforms, having been used by around 40 million people since its creation in 2001. Fans of the site will have until 30th June to transfer over their content to other channels or devices. The announcement follows the closure of Klout earlier this month.
Airbnb launches Travel Stories to help users share their adventures Airbnb has quietly jumped on the Stories bandwagon with the launch of Travel Stories, a new feature which will enable users of the platform to create and share video sequences of their adventures via the site. The brand recently sent out an invitation to the beta test to select users. The new feature will only be available on the latest version of the Airbnb iPhone app, under the Travel Stories tab on the user’s profile, and video clips will be limited to 10 seconds each. Would-be travellers will be able to view other guests’ Stories either via the Airbnb site or the Travel Stories section of the app.
