Social media giant Facebook and online retailer eBay have joined forces to provide shoppers with a new online shopping experience which will mimic real-life shopping experience. This is an attempt on part of both the companies to resurrect the field of social commerce.
At Innovate, eBay’s developer conference which launched in San Francisco on Wednesday, CEO John Donahoe said, “”We are at an inflection point. We will see more change in how consumers shop and pay in the next three years that we have seen in the last 15 years.
His forecast was given in the context of introduction of X.commerce, the platform built by eBay and it associates PayPal, Magento and GSI. X.commerce is designed to create a robust, full-service and open eCommerce solution.
Several companies have tried their luck by setting up storefronts on Facebook to sell to customers while they network with friends, however, the response or rather lack of it indicate that people are not interested in buying while socializing online.
The reluctance to indulge in Facebook shopping could be due to the novelty of Facebook’s eCommerce or it could be a prejudice towards a platform which is really designed to share photos and keep track of former romantic attachments, yet again, it could be that users are worried that their credit card and personal information is being tracked by Facebook in the transaction process. Buyers online are either redirected to a brand’s own online store or they buy on Facebook and often have to accept an app
eBay hopes that its new X.commerce open platform for retail developers with its new apps intended to create opportunities for friends to interact with each other when shopping online and to help large brands and retailers tap into social connection to market their products, will change all that.
Matthew Mengerink, vice president and general manager of X.commerce said, “Commerce is a very difficult space. I don’t think we are going to see easy answers right out of the gate. Dubbing the current form of online shopping, ‘ a very individualistic and lonely experience,’, he said there was need to make it more entertaining. He hoped that Facebook’s social graph would pave the way.
Commenting on X.Commerce, Katie Mitic, director of platform and mobile marketing at Facebook and a recent eBay board member, said, “The integration represents a powerful way to bring people together across an inherently social activity – shopping. We are just starting to see what’s possible with social commerce.”
This partnership will allow third party developers to build social commerce apps that allow users to share what products they ‘buy’, ‘want’, ‘own’ or ‘recommend’ thereby creating a new shopping experiences for shoppers and retailers, and allowing them to share ideas regarding buying and selling.. But is this enough to really change the face of social commerce?
Mr. Mengerink envisages an online shopping experience that mirrors a real-life shopping experience. People who go shopping, browse through products, discuss what they like and don’t like, talk and laugh and don’t always end up buying. Contrary to this, most of the shopping apps online are focused on the point of sale. To be successful, they will have to emulate the more enjoyable real-life shopping experience, he believes. To make this a reality, “we are encouraging developers to try out the more ‘pre-shopping’ social experience, which is ‘joining so-and-so- at a store,” he said.
As Leena Rao of TechCrunch said X.commerce symbolizes the first instance of eBay creating a business that truly caters to developers. In the past, eBay developers have been divided into the eBay marketplace, PayPal, etc., but now developers have all those technologies in one place, allowing them to create “new shopping and eCommerce experiences based on these interconnected suite of tools”.
Now, what remains to be seen is whether the ‘want’, ‘own’, ‘recommend’ and ‘buy’ buttons can emulate the real-life shopping experience and draw people to it.