Will Social Media Affect the Way We Shop?
Posted: Monday 31 October, 2011
Colin Miller
Social media and primarily Facebook have impacted our online relationships in a profound way, so much so, that we now often interact with people online far more than we do in ‘real life’ – something which has an interesting affect on the way information is shared between people and what we do with that information.
E-commerce is fast becoming a huge part of the online world, with shoppers able to order anything from the latest Blu-Ray to a brand new car at the click of a button. With the explosive success that social media continues to have, it only makes sense that social shopping will eventually come to be a key part of our online experience.
The changes announced by Facebook at the recent f8 conference created a number of new avenues to make social shopping a more rewarding and useful experience within Facebook. The customisable Open Graph features now available to developers will mean that alongside the familiar ‘Like’ button, new and more emotive options such as want, need, recommend or love can be created to better convey the thoughts of a buyer or potential customer.
Additionally the recent integration of Spotify into Facebook has shown how instant recommendations can influence the decision to download or listen to a certain track or album. For example, seeing a song that a friend is listening to popup in your Facebook ticker, could then lead to you also checking out that track or artist, as the likelihood is that you have shared interests in music, films and fashion etc. The principal behind social shopping is much the same, we trust our friends more than any advertising agency or brand, and products recommended to us via the people we know will be more attractive to us.
Another great example of this was with Levi’s recent ‘Friends Store’ campaign, which enables shoppers and fans to share and recommend their favourite Levi's products via ‘Likes’ which is displayed on the Levis site next to the suggested product. Interestingly this campaign was the first of its kind to fully integrate Open Graph functionality as part of the online browsing experience. With the recent changes to the Facebook Open Graph functions, campaigns like this will become more varied and exciting and will give rise to a much richer online social shopping experience.
The social aspect of online interaction permeates a large amount of our browsing time. As a result, social shopping could certainly add another dimension to something that was previously a more private and generally unexciting experience. Talking about products and learning from people we trust, who own or have used products, may ultimately help us to make more informed purchase decisions. That said, it may just be another unwanted notification clogging up your newsfeed - only time will tell, but it looks like social shopping will happen whether we want it to or not.
