F-Commerce; A Success Story?

But things are continually changing. For a while there I saw at least once per day a status update along the lines of “Facebook you’ve changed.. again?” or “Go back to normal Facebook”, people complain for a few days then get on with it. But this move has taken the social network to a whole new playing field. F-commerce. For the lowest common denominator reading this blog that’s Facebook’s equivalent to e-Commerce. Yes, online shopping goes social, Facebook styles.

Tell me, would you buy a T-Shirt online? Most of you are probably going to say yes to this. Who would you buy it from? ASOS? Threadless? A few other good T-shirt brands that you know and probably trust I’m guessing.  Now what about through their Facebook Fan page?.. Trust that? Feel comfortable? Or even could be bothered? Surely not whilst your bestie Sally* is instantly messaging you like crazy because you didn’t ‘like’ her last status update.

It’s a nice idea, and I can completely see the reasoning behind it. FB employee 1: Hey all of my friends rave about and ‘like’ (insert brand name here) FB employee 2: We should make money from this. Bing! F-Commerce was born (this may or may not have actually happened).

Online retailing dynamite’s ASOS have reported that the social commerce has been slow to provide financial returns. I wonder why? You lose your shoppers when anxiety kicks in. “Oh do I really want to make a purchase via Facebook?” The mix of credit cards and rumours of future Facebook charges sink into our shoppers head and she/he freezes.  I would too.

I’m on Facebook to do Facebooky things not buy products. It’s not a medium that one would think of to use when all of a sudden Joe walks past with funky coloured pants and you get the idea that you want a pair too. Do I go to an online store or .. Facebook?

Time will tell if this fabulous F-commerce picks up and starts making some serious figures but for the mean time I’ll just stick to the regulars, you know, e-Commerce.