If you have “liked” an item on the internet up until this point you could share it with your friends just like you would posts, likes, photos and comments, but the “transaction” so to speak ended there. That all changed on Monday when the company began rolling out ‘collect’ and ‘want’ options for photos.
Fans of a product can now list products they want and even buy products that are within a collection they find on a friends account.
Facebook is not attempting to become an online retailer, instead it will send customers directly to the online stores e-commerce page.?
As Mike Stenger at SocialNewsDaily points out:
“Right now, Facebook is working with such companies as Neiman Marcus, Victoria?s Secret, Pottery Barn, and others and will likely perform a slow test rollout, first to big names and then to the smaller guys. A rep made it clear that the social network doesn?t get a cut of any transactions, but you can be sure they?re definitely enticing companies to advertise whether it?s through promoted posts or in the Facebook sidebar.”
The move to disconnect itself from the product purchase process is a probably a smart move for the world’s largest social network given the fear many users have in how Facebook handles their private information, a fear that would likely carry over to the customers credit card.
