Los Angeles – In a surprising turn of events the social-networking giant Facebook on Monday confirmed rumors swirling for months that the social networking giant is actively trying out additions to its arsenal of business-friendly interactive tools for users in a big way, taking a step toward closing that loop with Collections, allowing users to not only like, but collect, want, or buy products that brands share through images on the social network.
The social media giant is getting further into e-commerce with a feature that looks a whole lot like Pinterest. The site has begun testing a feature called “Collections” with certain retailers: Pottery Barn, Wayfair, Victoria’s Secret, Michael Kors, Neiman Marcus, Smith Optics, and Fab.com, which will let retailers provide new ways for Facebook fans to share products they like with their friends.
Pottery Barn is one of Facebook’s test partners for “Collections”… (Credit: Facebook)
For the test, in addition to normal like, comment, or share prompts, product-based image posts from these pages will include collect or want options, too, wherein users will be able to engage with Collections by “liking”, “collecting” or “wanting” the products. Facebook is testing these three actions, and is creating three distinct groups of users to test each action. Products within a Collection will also have a “Buy” link, sending people to the brand’s website to purchase a product.
Collections is not just a facet of the photos feature, it is a completely separate type of post that appears on a company’s Page. In particular, the collect button allows a person to generate a page of cool images of products, similar to Pinterest Pin Boards. And, anything that is “collected” or “liked” is included into a new Timeline feature called “products.” It shows the things you admire but maybe are not ready to whip your wallet out for yet.
It comes in the form of a new type of Page post that is eligible to appear in the news feed. Besides, if you “want” the item, it automatically goes into your “wishlist.” Collected items can also be put into your wishlist as well.
Admittedly, this is a way to direct advertising: you already know somebody’s a fan of say, Pottery Barn, so its kind of like dropping a new catalog into somebody’s newsfeed. And you can see what your friends think is awesome, so you can either copy them or avoid being too matchy-matchy.
A Facebook spokeswoman said Collections is a logical step to helping brands spread their products.
We’ve seen that businesses often use Pages to share information about their products through photo albums. Today, we are beginning a small test in which a few select businesses will be able to share information about their products through a feature called Collections. Collections can be discovered in News Feed, and people will be able to engage with these collections and share things they are interested in with their friends. People can click through and buy these items off of Facebook.
Moreover, there was some talk at the time of the addition of a Want button for products, but more speculation emerged around different variations of how a user might be able to signify that they had consumed media. For now, Facebook is not charging brands, nor is it taking a cut of any transaction. But obviously that could change.