Facebook is rolling out a new form of page called 'Collections' which brands and e-commerce sites can use to their advantage, as a form of advertising.
Only for U.S members at the moment, the test is teaming up with 7 retail partners:
Pottery Barn, Wayfair, Victoria's Secret, Michael Kors, Neiman Marcus, Smith Optics, and Fab.com.
If you become a fan of a brand, products will show on your news feed as would usually with those random funny image pages you've probably all seen as a photo album, but this is where things get different.
You will have the option of not only to 'Like' as normal, but to 'Collect', and 'Want' a product.
Products you 'Like' or 'Collect' go into a new part of the timeline called 'Products'. If you 'Want' and item, it goes into your 'Wishlist'. Sounds like Facebook could be turning into a virtual shop huh?
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.
Of course, it doesn't stop there. If you are a fan of a brand, and choose to select to 'Like', Collect', and Want' a specific item, your friends will be notified in different ways.
If you choose to 'Collect', it will share this with your friends only. Choose to 'Like' or 'Want' it however, and it will share by default to friends of friends, which I see as being a major problem if I'm honest… How many of your friends share random stuff that fills your wall?
If you choose to 'Collect' a product, you will of course also have the option to go to a link to buy the product in question, and they hope of course your friend will join in clicking and buying if they are interested too.
At the moment, Facebook is not charging for this as it is just a test, but I can expect by the end of the process and as it finishes rolling out, Facebook will indeed start charging for this 'Collections' set of pages to build up revenue lost.
What sort of brands could we expect Facebook to work with in the future? Games? Music/Blu-Ray's? If you have been somewhere like Amazon.com, you will probably be used to the 'Wishlist' function. It seems like Facebook is going in this direction, offering not only a social service, but a way to promote more business into the site, adding to its worth.
I'm not sure what to think of this. I find sometimes, news feeds are crowded with information like random images and likes as it is, and to have your news feeds battered with product images your friends, and friends of friends have liked seems a bit much. I'm sure there will be a way to block these, but if not, its just another thing you will have to put up with if you choose to stay active on Facebook. Expect even more random requests.
What do you think? Comments as always down below.
