Maybe due to the fact there’s been a huge outcrop of starry-eyed reports on the wondrous possibilities unfolding around social commerce that end up being little more than poorly researched PR re-prints, I found it very refreshing to come across some excellent ‘reality check’ articles regarding the actual effectiveness of these recent Facebook storefronts. The first was a post by Alvin Tan of Zuupy in which he questions the effectiveness of current solutions based around the premise that people are just not in a shopping frame of mind when they come to Facebook and the second by Vidar Brekke giving his thoughts and critique on the recent launch of the JC Penney Facebook storefront. Last but not least is a report by Internet Retailer on the strategic initiatives being taken within Facebook regarding social commerce and their view of the current landscape. David Fisch, the Facebook executive heading the e-commerce initiative, states that “storefronts are only one piece, and really a pretty small piece, of the burgeoning area of social commerce. Our interest isn’t in getting people to create tabs where people can shop”. It seems Facebook’s goal lies in externalizing the ‘Like’ features of Facebook onto retailers e-commerce sites, and linking those with Facebook connect to provide interesting and useful filter and product targeting functionality for users.
These recent articles provide an excellent follow on to the topic raised in our last post on how we are still at the very early stages of e-commerce functionality on social networks and how the most effective model has yet to be found, despite all our best efforts so far.
Update: Just found one more relevant article on the recent crop of storefront launches written by Paul Marsden.