Watch out… the way you shop is about to change.
Social Commerce has been around for about a year now, but has had a relatively slow start. While gamers have been comfortable with shelling out their hard earned cash within social media environments (just look at all those Farmville players buying cows for their virtual farms), the uptake on buying real world goods through social media has been below expectations. The reason for this is clear: to date, no one has focused on the consumers behaviours that are inherent in the shopping process – until now.
eBay, in conjunction with their nest eggs PayPal and Magento, today announced their new robust, full-service and open eCommerce solution – X.commerce.
“One of the more anticipated announcements to come out of Innovate was a partnership between the world’s largest social network and eBay, which will see the latter integrating Facebook’s Open Graph (the tree of connections Facebookers create by sharing and interacting with friends and content on the social network) into its Magento and GSI global commerce platforms.” (source: TechCrunch)
What does it mean? Well, it now opens up eBay’s previously closed environment out to developers around the world, allowing them to innovate outside of eBay’s online properties and incorporate social features from Facebook along the way. The result will be e-commerce solutions that tap into the social behaviours of shopping, allowing consumers to share, discuss and generally make online shopping a more fun and collaborative experience. Expect consumer’s trust issues to also diminish with the added security that big names like eBay and PayPal bring to the table.
Are all the retailers out there paying attention?
Particularly in the Australian market, retailers have been stinging from the growth of online shopping, and that has been based on traditional 90’s-esque e-commerce – a solitary experience that can sometimes feel like more of a chore than a true shopping experience. With the addition of behavioural features that make shopping a fun experience for consumers, and a platform that encourages developers around the world to innovate on two industry leading platforms, it is well and truly time for the large retailers to start paying attention and start catching up quickly with successful counterparts overseas if they want to continue to be a player.
It is hard to believe that things won’t change very quickly with two of the biggest players in technology committing to this so publicly. Watch this space.
More details here:
– http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/12/facebook-and-ebay-team-up-to-breathe-new-life-into-social-commerce/
