Following last week’s launch of Facebook Classifieds I said to more than a few people that I liked the idea, but why the hell did Facebook need to partner-up for this venture? Well, it turns out they felt the same way – they’ve just re-launched their Marketplace dropping partner Oodle out of the equation (if they were really even in it to begin with – see below).

This “new” Marketplace looks awesome (Muhammad has a great, in-depth write-up of it on Pronet). I have absolutely no doubt now that Facebook can and will make it on their own (if they choose to) and years from now we’ll look back at their pre-IPO days as a how-to for start-ups looking to become multi-billion dollar empires. (Am I going too far there?)

In the course of 4 days Facebook has taken a product which seemed just kind of ho-hum and turned it into what now seems to be pure gold. Whether or not this was the plan all along I’m sure we’ll hear about in the coming days. Did they really mean to completely cannibalize what now just seemed to be a service built with their API (Oodle)? Or was it vice-versa – Oodle rushing out the door to beat Marketplace?

Either way, it’s definitely going to turn into a case of ‘if you liked this, well then you’re really gonna like this.’