Buy.com’s New Service Empowers Social Commerce on Facebook
Forbes broke news today about a new Facebook Application from Buy.com called Garage Sale. Garage Sale allows Facebook users post and sell items on their profile pages. Buy.com will charge those using the service a flat 5% commission fee on every item sold. It is certainly a service with a ton of upside and potential, but I have to wonder if Buy.com has possibly bitten off more than they can chew.
According to Buy.com CEO Neel Grover, “In essence, we’re empowering the social networking sites in some fashion to compete with eBay, but we’re processing the transactions behind that.”
eBay and Amazon Are Likely To Deliver Their Own Social Commerce Services
Although it is not an auction, like on eBay, Buy.com will still need to hold each party responsible for each end of the transaction, not to mention they have opened themselves up to liability as they are now going to be dealing with sensitive customer information not on a third party’s network. One has to wonder if they are ready for this challenge. One also has to expect that Buy.com will see heavy competition from the likes of Amazon and eBay in the very near future when it comes to these social commerce services.
The idea of adding ecommerce capabilities to social networks is one that has a very bright future. Social commerce is the next big thing. Whether or not Buy.com is the company behind the movement, is another question. One that will soon be answered.
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[…] not take long for online auction king eBay to release a Facebook application. Just a few days after Buy.com launched their Facebook commerce application, eBay has launched the eBay Marketplace Application. This is just the sort of application I have […]
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