• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, March 3, 2009

Facebook has relaunched classified listings through a partnership with Oodle to power the social network's Marketplace feature. The revamped service aims to make classifieds conversational by incorporating the design and functionality of Facebook profile pages into the system.

That means users can post listings in Marketplace as they would status updates, opting to sell, "sell for a cause" (with profits going to charity), give away or ask for something. People are also prompted to say why they are selling something in order to spark a dialogue about the listing, with comments posted on an item's "wall." The listings then show up in friends' news feeds.

Facebook hired Oodle three months ago to run its classified section after the initial version of Marketplace unveiled in May 2007 failed to catch on with members. In an interview with the blog Inside Facebook, Oodle CEO and founder Craig Donato explained that the latest incarnation is tailored to the site.

"We designed the classifieds experience around the way conversation happens in Facebook," he said. "In addition, we have a lot of infrastructure we've been building for the last four years designed to maintain quality control, do fraud and spam detection, auto-categorization of listings, and so on." Oodle also powers classifieds on MySpace and AOL, among hundreds of other sites.

Like Oodle, Facebook Marketplace is free--supported by contextual ads and sponsored listings--and includes no payment system at present. Like Craigslist, which Marketplace will compete with, people will complete transactions offline. And while the service is focused on merchandise to start, an Oodle spokesperson said Wednesday that other categories would be rolled out this spring such as real estate and employment.

In a post on the Facebook's company blog Wednesday, Donato highlighted the "sell for a cause" feature that allows users to donate proceeds from items to the million participating charities in the nonprofit Network for Good. (The organization is also behind Facebook's Causes application introduced last year.)

When someone donates an item to sell for a cause such as UNICEF or the Sierra Club, that fact is promoted in the listing. Since it doesn't handle transactions, Oodle sends the seller an email to enter the payment information and make the donation later.