Just looking at the stacks of gift cards for sale at many stores will tell you that there is a card for everything. This includes Facebook. According to The Vancouver Sun, this is the beginning of a new style of ecommerce.
These are the early days of the virtual goods economy (you’re probably already taking part if you’ve ever bought a song on iTunes or an app for your smartphone), but this is also the very early stage of F-Commerce (or Facebook Commerce).
The conversation around social media was about building loyalty, trust and chatter for brands by using platforms like Facebook, where people like to engage with one another. The challenge was in figuring out the analytics to link those social acts back to a sale and create a semblance of proper retail attribution.
Now, all of that changes. Now, there is actual commerce taking place within Facebook.
Have you seen the Best Buy Facebook page? If you look at the navigation, you’ll note a tab titled “Shop + Share.” The antiquated Internet strategy of two years ago that insisted brands drive consumers back to their website is slowly dying. Why force people to leave Facebook to have a great Best Buy experience?
As Facebook extends its platform into any and every digital space (websites, Blogs, smartphones, etc. .) and people have a level of trust in the security of their Facebook Credits, it’s not out of line to think about what the major implications of F-Commerce might be on the future of business.
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