I have started to notice links popping up in my mini news feeds posted by my friends who have stuff to sell. Some of this stuff is personal – like used bicycles – but some is related to what these people do for business – like real estate. Today, I noticed that one of my friends who is a real estate agent has posted a link to an open house that she has listed in the Boston area. I have heard from others on Facebook that they too are starting to see this sort of stuff popping up.

I think this is a pretty fascinating development on a few levels. First, it makes total sense for the person with something to sell. Getting the word out to friends and friends of friends about stuff that people want to sell is a classic method of getting stuff sold. This approach just formalizes this and takes it to another level. It also has it all over Craigslist since it is also free, comes with a built in pre-qualified base of friends to get the word out and does not have to compete with other weird stuff that is being hawked on Craigslist. And, since we all know that part of the hurdle of buying stuff via the classifieds is trying to evaluate the trustworthiness of the seller, this approach minimizes that by leveraging the trust of the network of friends that surround the seller.

But, I am wondering how the community will feel if the mini news feed becomes one giant classifieds section. We all know that the big attraction to Facebook is getting updated on what people are doing, and maybe what they are selling is part of that interest. But, what if these ads start to become more about selling “commercial goods from commercial enterprises” like my friend selling real estate and less about my friend whose dog just had a litter of puppies and wants to sell them or who is moving to a new city and wants to get rid of his kayak.

What will be fascinating to watch is the reaction by Facebook to all of this. Will it passively sit by and let others monetize (again) the networks that it spends millions to maintain? Will it devise ways to “tax” people who do this in some way? Or, will they view this as a way to commercialize a new product line, classifieds, that not only allow this sort of thing to flourish but enable the commerce that it seems to naturally facilitate.