Jesse Pickard and Shiv Singh over at Avenue A | Razorfish have put together a presentation which highlights the future of Facebook Connect as integrated with e-retailers. The presentation highlights the potential for targeting influencers based on the number of friends they have, something I previously speculated about back in March. Another item they highlight is the potential for targeting product advertisements based on the interests listed in your profile.
Unfortunately, I’m not sure if people keep their real interests up to date. I for instance have “Gummy Bears” listed as my interests (they are seriously really good). The presentation also shows the potential for integrating friend lists directly into product description pages. Much of what Jesse and Shiv highlight in the presentation has been discussed widely and some of it has actually been implemented.
For instance both SGN and Zynga have launched Facebook Connect integration into their iPhone applications. The idea of social shopping has been around for a while but many are hoping that Facebook Connect will increase the momentum in the social shopping space. While it’s a great idea, I’m not sure that other services are willing to leverage Facebook Connect for shopping purposes.
While Amazon integrated with the failed Beacon service, I’m not quite sure that iTunes or other sites will want to rely on Facebook for their social graph. Additionally, companies like iLike already offer these service but we could soon find out that many of these other services were simply offering an existing service with the combination of “social”.
Facebook Connect ultimately makes social a feature though, not a competitive advantage. As such, this will provide many with the incentive to integrate once Connect has reached critical mass. For now, I’d assume that many large e-commerce services will be a bit hesitant to integrate. Do you think Facebook Connect will be successful at attracting e-commerce partners?
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I read this slide deck and didn't get why it's such a big deal.
1. Amazon already offers collaborative filtering based on the feedback from a lot of other people. In the off chance that my friend and I bought the same product, why is that information more useful to me than information from someone else who's a qualified / experienced product reviewer on Amazon? Most of my real friends have never reviewed the places I go on Yelp but I still get lots of utility from it.
2. When it comes to music, we already have some pretty good music solutions for sharing content with friends and the community at large. I'm not sure why the iTunes piece was more important or interesting than what can already be done using a broad, crowd-based filtering approach.
The one benefit to Amazon would be the same benefit that Beacon offered – the ability to broadcast activity to the News Feed to drive more commerce activity.
Comment by Charles Hudson — December 4, 2008 @ 8:23 am
Yeah I agree … I think the real benefit from Facebook Connect is simplicity.
Comment by Nick O'Neill — December 4, 2008 @ 8:33 am
Thanks for the feedback guys. The deck is meant to illustrate what becomes possible when a site has access to rich Facebook user data and an ability to seamlessly plug into Facebook features. We're not necessarily saying that Amazon or iTunes needs to or should implement FBC at this point.
Our stance is that Facebook Connect is much more than an alternative to OpenID or a second version of Beacon. I'd be more than happy to chat more about this. Feel free to email me at jesse.pickard@razorfish.com
Comment by Jesse Pickard — December 4, 2008 @ 9:00 am
Something that Amazon doesn't do as yet is let me filter by my own social graph and that's what makes Facebook Connect really special. At the end of the day, I'm more interested in the opinions of the people that I know than of anonymous people on the web. FB Connect allows us to differentiate between the two.
Having said that, there are competitors to Facebook Connect that are entering the marketplace. Its left to be seen which ones will gain the most traction.
Comment by Shiv Singh — December 4, 2008 @ 12:03 pm
Hi Charles,
I have been focusing on the belief that the opposite may be true. A review (or quick suggestion) from a friend has an exponentially bigger impact than a review from a random reviewer.
My favorite example that I personally embrace is within Netflix (Friends and Community tab). When my friend writes a quick one liner and provides the # of stars for a movie, I have a great handle on whether I should add that movie to my queue because I know the personality of that person. On the flipside, I completely ignore the reviews from people I don't know because they have little value comparably.
Hi Nick,
Being able to use profile interests as a 'starting point' seems invaluable even if outdated. Most people don't know where to begin when shopping, watching videos, listening to music. Providing a starting point based on the users 'past thinking' should get the user going…
The above comes from some of the interesting stuff we're working on at BaconMarathon Labs. We have been focused on connecting the dots btw facebook, youtube and amazon. (facebook application name is top3Clicks — give it a whirl to see how we're tackling these ideas first hand and feel free to provide feedback!)
Comment by mike rubin — December 5, 2008 @ 2:46 pm
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