This recent press release from P&G--the makers of Pampers is particularly intriguing. Facebook and Amazon experimenting to embed linked e-commerce capability for mainstream companies such as P&G.
--
CINCINNATI,
Sept. 30, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- There is no doubt that moms and dads spend a great deal of time on Facebook and today, Pampers announces it will make purchasing some of their favorite Pampers and P&G products a little easier by launching access to Facebook shopping capabilities via the Pampers Fan Page. Starting today, parents can buy Pampers brand diapers and wipes (plus an assortment of other P&G brand products including Tide, Oral B, Olay and Pantene just to name a few) via the Pampers Facebook page, a community of more than 350,000 fans. The e-commerce capabilities are powered by Amazon.com, which will provide customers with the Amazon.com transaction experience they have come to know and love; free shipping on all orders over
$25 and free two-day shipping for all Prime members.
The announcement arrives just a few months after the brand's success with its Facebook pre-sale of Pampers Cruisers with Dry Max, which sold out its 1000-pack allotment in less than an hour. The e-commerce capabilities will first be leveraged by Amazon.com. While Pampers is the first P&G brand to introduce a gateway to e-commerce shopping capabilities via a Facebook "shop now" tab, P&G plans on expanding this offering to other brands' Facebook pages and retailers in the coming months.
--
NY Times online has more details here.
This is a fascinating development - one which lends further strength to the argument I put forth last week (i.e. that Facebook has the potential to be a game-changing, one-stop portal for internet activity).
ReplyDeleteThis is, at once, a brilliant and potentially tragic move for Amazon. At face value, it seems like a no-brainer: open up yet another channel for selling your goods. It's a win-win for both companies. Amazon drives sales and Facebook expands its feature-set to its growing user base.
But what happens if users begin to associate Facebook (and not Amazon) with e-commerce? What if Facebook decides to start selling and distributing products on its own? It's not inconceivable to think that Facebook could quickly build out the necessary infrastructure to support a compelling e-tailing business.
Of course, this isn't Facebook's core competency, but we are beginning to see in Facebook a desire to touch the lives of its users in increasingly diverse ways. An online store would certainly fit this trend. Could Facebook's partnership with Amazon be a trojan horse? Is Zuckerberg test-driving the idea of Facebook as a powerhouse retailer?
This shows that Facebook is on the move to get a cut of revenue collected in its house. Being a place where goods are sold could actually help Facebook to increase its ads revenue -since every ad can lead to a potential purchase(doesn't google's ads model sound familiar to you?) I guess social media is not just for friends to catch up and tagging photos anymore; it will become a driving force of the networked economy which clearly ties social networking to sales generating.
ReplyDelete