Chiang Rai News
Facebook in Thailand Will Now Offer a Marketplace Category, Property for Rentals
BANGKOK – Thailand will be the first country in the Asia-Pacific region to see the launch of Facebook’s new Marketplace category, Property for Rentals.
Globally, Thailand is the fifth market (after US, Canada, France and Britain) in which Facebook has introduced Property for Rent, said Mayank Yadav, product manager of Facebook Marketplace.
Thailand is an important market for Facebook, with 51 million monthly users and 32 million active daily users. It is also a mobile-first country and has a strong commercial culture, especially conversational commerce, which is text-based selling via Facebook Messenger.
There are 2.5 million small-business Facebook pages in Thailand.
Facebook launched the new feature yesterday to particular groups. Every Facebook user will have access within four weeks.
Mr Yadav said this is the first time Facebook has introduced the service through a collaboration with partners, namely Dot Property, Hipflat and Property Flow.
Thailand is also the first country with dual-language support for the rental category, in Thai and English.
Facebook is offering the feature free of charge, aiming to serve user demand for long-term rentals (over 12 months) in particular.
A system is in place to detect and remove inappropriate content, including a rating system and self-reporting tools.
“We aim to fulfil users’ demand because 93% of users discover products and service brands via Facebook,” Mr Yadav said.
To use the new feature, go to Marketplace and choose Property For Rent to find rental listings and use the map view to browse by location. The system can filter by location, price, rental type, amount of space and pet-friendliness.
If users are interested, they can contact the property owner in-app to ask for more details.
Last November, Facebook launched Marketplace in Thailand as a place to buy and sell within local communities. Thailand is among the top-tier countries to introduce the Marketplace feature.
In the US, the company started up Marketplace in November 2016, and today one-third of US users do business in Marketplace.
