[...] F-commerce just isn’t working.  It was recently reported on Pandodaily and Bloomberg that over the last year Gamestop, J.C. Penny, Gap Inc, and Nordstrom have all closed [...]

[...] consensus in these articles seems to be that selling stuff to Facebook users simply doesn’t work and they usually have 3 or 5 bullet points to prove their point. A lot of these arguments attribute [...]

[...] Facebook’s social graph now includes almost a billion users.  Most of the popular competing social networks to-date are built on some version of a similar social graph.  But social doesn’t sell… at least not as well as search, or interest (which is related to search in intention).  Facebook only makes somewhere between $4.39 and $5.02 annually per monthly active user.  Many businesses trying to use Facebook for commerce have written the platform off as a disaster. [...]

[...] are your thoughts on F-commerce? Last week there was a lot of talk about its shortcomings.  We’re bullish on the idea that Facebook will play a huge role in commerce and e-commerce. [...]

[...] FaceItPages There has been a lot of talk recently about retailers closing Facebook pages and how e-commerce within Facebook doesn’t work. A big part of the problem is that these retailers don’t know how to effectively leverage [...]

Just commented on Brian Solis' article and again, will state here I agree that f-commerce isn't doing that well. I like to think of Facebook as a place for campaigns, not commerce. A great promotional or marketing campaign can drive sales (we've seen success with sampling and flash-sales), but simply having a store as one of your tabs will not. I will disagree about the point regarding massive costs and upkeep of the stores however. At the company I work for, we offer f-commerce stores as part of the package we give manus, and the inventory and such is all integrated with our larger site. So it's not a big deal for these brands to manage the store at all. But these are brand-specific stores, not a retailer, so a bit different I suppose.

This doesn't surprise me. Why would people want to buy something inside Facebook when they can simply go to the website and have a much better shopping experience? People want contests and promos from brands but they don't want to shop inside Facebook. It's too scary imo. If brands want to showcase their premier products or storefront, it seems better to link the product to the product page on their website. I think brands should focus more on using Facebook to offer incentives that people will spread around and less on f-commerce.

[...] I am hearing a lot of debate about how brands should view facebook.  The big question is whether  a brand’s Facebook presence be a destination or a way of sending visitors to other online assets under the brand’s control.  The question has been triggered in part by some high profile storefront closures scaling back their plans as covered by All Facebook.  Our colleagues at the Pando Daily also posted an article entitled is stop trying to make f-commerce happen. [...]

While the move to e-commerce had some very obvious benefits, I am not so sure there are any benefits to f-commerce. Why should I buy things inside Facebook? What are the advantages. If consumers don't see distinct and significant advantages, they'll never do it.

The best thing facebook can do is help ecommerce stores publish viewed items to the ticker. So if i approve the gap, or whatever, then every item i view on the gap should be published to facebook. Similar to how it publishes songs people listen to on spotify.

Bloomberg decided to show only a few failed attempts of F-commerce, and didn't provide even one brand that succeed in F-commerce (You have to question their motives here). Saying Facebook is just for hanging out, is like saying smart phones are just for talking..come on... We at StoreYa, see an enormous traction, there's an amazing daily growth of merchants, creating their own Facebook shops. There's no doubt that F-commerce is the next step in the eCommerce evolution, but it will take some time. You must provide the merchants with the right engagement tools, such as: Fans-firsts, Fans exclusive deals & discounts, this adds an important added value to the social shopping experience.

You get "angry birds" ads on facebook? That's nothing! I get spammy ads about weight loss secrets, cosmetic treatments, single girls and dodgy loans. And btw I never click them, and I rarely "like" things, so I assume what I see must be some kind of Facebook default. This kind of spam is not anything that an honest retailer wants alongside their products, so I can well understand why they would take their business elsewhere.

The startup that developed the technology used by major brands to launch the first Facebook storefronts starting in 2009 (8th Bridge, formerly Alvenda) has a new tack. I mentioned their new Open Graph initiative, including a recent partnership with Ticketmaster, in a post I wrote three days ago on the F-commerce meme: http://bit.ly/AkaSY6

[...] And then there’s the question of how Facebook itself feels about services like this. The company, after all, is built to take money from advertisers — and ThingLink bypasses that business somewhat by allowing advertisers to build their own interactive billboards. Plus Facebook is bound to be looking for ways to extract more cash from marketers, given both the forthcoming IPO and the increasing evidence that one of its other big bets — Facebook storefronts — just doesn’t work. [...]

Interesting take. I think the "failure" from these larger retailers is because they treat it like an e-commerce or product catalog extension and haven't gotten into the contextual mindset of the specific Facebook user.  I've found a lot more success when building commerce into other types of content than by having a pure Facebook storefront.

fCommerce is a subset of sCommerce. I think social media is following a similar maturity curve as the internet from informational to transactional. Large scale Commerce will occur (in, though, with) social media. When thinking about sCommerce, start thinking new channel. All the tools built for eCommerce, mCommerce (mobile) will be needed and integrated with sCommerce, which includes the fCommerce. Then adoption, usage and ROI will be realized. My “4 S’s of sCommerce” are Selection, Suggestion, Service, and Secure. Here are some questions to ask to get started. Selection – What are your products and services clients can choose? i.e. product and services catalog. Is your catalog the same and available across all customer channels? Some products are more appropriate for the social channel, do you know which ones? Suggestion – Sometimes people do not know what they want and need help finding things. Do you have the data analytics to offer the next best product? Do you have contact history, last product purchased, etc. to make recommendations and leverage the “likes”. Service – Do you have the elements of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) integrated into your social channel? How does your sCommerce connect to other delivery channels to complete the sales and service process? What about downstream fulfillment, order tracking and reporting. Secure – This is a foundational element, do you have the security and authentication process/ tools to complete commerce? Are you in a regulated industry, what compliance topics needs to be considered?

[...] rozhodně ne nakupovat. A je celkem jedno, jak tzv. F-Commerce firma tlačí. Tudy zkrátka cesta nevede. Je to stejné jako s G+. I když by Google moc rád měl svoji sociální síť, lidi to prostě [...]

f-commerce will happen... it will just happen outside of facebook itself: - common login/wallet - sharing to wall/stream - comparing and social shopping (check out Zara's ipad app) with friends FB will power it, but the shopping will be done on retailer's sites (control, security, integration w/ x-commerce, magento, etc.)

ooh, this is not good news for those trying to make a business out of promoting f-commerce on facebook pages, either way, the proof is in the numbers, numbers don't lie, and if the investment proves to produce low ROI, then might as well dump it. Facebook promotion does help, so what would you say about brands that offer coupons or exclusive offers to their facebook fans on their custom facebook pages? That's obviously worthy content, right?

I think the point you make about the user's intent is at the core of the problem - users aren't there to buy stuff. Pinterest, on the other hand, is all about browsing so storefronts there would be a natural match.

Facebook has done a remarkable job of user acquisition and retention, but that does not equal purchaser confidence. In fact, Facebook has proven that they have a really, really hard time innovating outside of the news feed. Messages, Deals, Commerce, Check Ins, etc etc etc. The only real innovation since the beginning has been from other companies based on the FB platform (Zynga). The JC Penney crowd has no real interest in going to Facebook for purchases. Most of them want to go to the mall. Facebook shows a lack of understanding of any market but social in their effort to conquer real world marketplaces. Hell, they have glaring problems with that sometimes (fix my buggy Android app, won't ya?!?!?). If nobody presents a real challenge, then maybe Facebook will eventually stumble into something useful to offline merchants. This is one of the few places that Google+ might grab a foothold if they can execute the Google Wallet stuff correctly. Whoever partners with Square (who has an excellent beat on small businesses and their needs) first will make an interesting go of things.

Erin - great points. I think it's a two-part problem. One is certainly Facebook - they just haven't given retailers the tools to make Facebook a viable commerce platform. The user experience of a store jammed into 600 pixels between Facebook chrome is simply miserable. Facebook needs to provide more flexibility to retailers (a store page layout perhaps) as well as more tools to tap into the massive data trove it has on users to create more compelling offers and reasons to buy. The second is the retailers. Retailers have created miserable storefronts. Even the best stores were nothing more than the product catalogs ported into Facebook chrome, which, as you mentioned, has it's downsides. You're spot on that consumers would rather buy on an optimized site than a clunky Facebook store. Retailers miscalculated thinking that consumers will put up with a suboptimal experience just because they're on Facebook. It's clear they won't. I think the real issue isn't about making F-commerce happen, it has to, for Facebook's sake, but how to make it happen, and what tools and experiences are going to be available. I actually think Zynga should take a shot at designing a social shopping experience. They obviously know how to leverage the Facebook platform and audience mindset to sell a ton of goods (albeit virtual); and I think that experience could be invaluable in developing a viable F-commerce platform on Facebook. I've addressed a few more points in a post I wrote here about it: http://www.pmorganbrown.com/2012/02/facebook-store-failures-are-retailers-faults-not-facebooks/