Facebook’s Pressure and Envy of Pinterest Spawns “Collections”

Facebook gapes.

Since Pinterest stormed into the social networking arena just about couple of years ago, it rippled the whole social media industry. Pinterest emphasized what an incredibly significant role photos holds and how users are reacting engagingly to them. The site’s connection to e-commerce has been established quickly and today they are pretty much laced together.

Facebook is envious.

The social networking giant eyes Pinterest in envy. The e-commerce twine with Pinterest had opened up not only a gateway to more outstretched audiences, which appears to be enormous, but also a hatch to a thing any public company seeks for. Revenue. Extremely lucrative streams of beautiful revenue.

Facebook is pressured.

The opening price of the FB share when it went public was $38. Since then, the share price been eroded by nearly a half and today it stands at around $20-$21 a share. That leaves too many investors unhappy, frustrated from what was suppose to be a big promising investment and turned out to a colossal debacle. The shareholders don’t care about the game of chairs, they demand more profits.

Facebook Spawns.

“Collections” has been born. Collections is a new feature which allows Pages to post on their fans’ Newsfeed product photos that includes new action buttons- “Want” and “Collect” which adds the product to a designated section on the user’s Timeline, or a new form of “Like” which will publish the product [up] to the user’s friends of friends. The product photos are supposedly clickable for immediate purchase of the product.

Facebook Collection product photo

Facebook covets.

Although Collections is still only available for a few selected launch partners such as Pottery Barn and Victoria’s Secret, the profits potential is obviously huge. First, it will encourage businesses to advertise on the social network to enlarge their fan-base (so more would be exposed to Collections). Second, there’s the possibility Facebook will gather some commission from sales through Collections or even reform the feature to a complete paid-model.

Facebook will flourish… or rouse revulsion.

There’s no doubt that Collections can become a considerably profitable tool for businesses and for Facebook itself. As Pinterest already proved, if used properly, social networking and e-commerce can have a tenacious connection. However, it can also shift otherwise- if too many merchant posts will appear on the users’ Newsfeed it will easily be too nudging and irritating.

I certainly don’t want (and not capable) to see on my Newsfeed what products ALL my thousands friends of friends likes. It will be just too much. There’s a fine line between spark interest or inflame aversion.

Facebook will…?