

Facebook is losing E-Commerce - nikcub
http://nikcub.appspot.com/posts/facebook-is-losing-e-commerce

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boredguy8
Why would I go to Facebook to interact with a store when I can go to, you
know, the store's site to interact with the store?

Facebook could, I imagine, be a powerful online store for people who don't
otherwise have storefronts, but people who think I'm going to go to FB to shop
online at Macy's are probably the same people who thought I'd go to Second
Life to shop online at Macy's.

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Tichy
Because Facebook is the internet. What is that "site" thing you keep talking
about?

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paulfreet
What is this facebook you keep talking about? Pinterest is the Internet

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pinspire
What is this pinterest you speak of? Pinspire is the Internet.

<http://www.Pinspire.com>

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zitterbewegung
Is it just me or is this the first time that anyone has even heard of stores
on Facebook? I haven't heard of a promotion or anyone encouraging me to go to
a store on facebook. I use Facebook pretty regularly also.

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jordhy
Stores on Facebook have been around for a while (e.g.
<http://www.facebook.com/YouBrandInc?v=app_135607783795>). Typically you
create them with a third-party app. I guess the best case study of this was
the Gap Store on Facebook (one of the coolest FB pages I've seen but no longer
online). While FB has time to get its e-commerce strategy right, this news
represent a huge blow.

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AznHisoka
"Pinterest is one of the fastest growing products ever, and recent estimates
(although possibly wildly inaccurate) suggest that the site is already
achieving tens of millions of dollars in affiliate revenues from its 10
million (and rapidly growing) users"

Anyone who's done any affiliate marketing knows this is wildly inaccurate.
Most people are there to browse, a minority click-through to the affiliate
link, a smaller minority have an intention to buy the product, and an even
smaller minority buy that product on that specific site in that specific
cookie timeframe.

Pinterest probably clears a million in affiliate revenue per year. They're not
a coupon site. They're not Google Adwords. it's all about user intention. It's
just a step above "selling a product to people in bars".

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pbreit
The OP repeats the ridiculous notion that Pinterst is making 10s of millions
of dollars not once but twice. As you say, the estimates in The Atlantic
article are wildly overstated.

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proletarian
Pinterest is not exactly a "minimal Facebook integration". It is integrated
with Timeline. As such, all your activity (pins, follows) are sent to Facebook
for display in news feeds, and for Facebook's ad algorithms. But Nik's point
is still very valid - less time spent on Facebook is less time spent looking
at Facebook ads, and stream posts of brands you are following. They will have
to do something to address this, maybe purchase the likes of Pinterest, or
require ads on Connect sites, or something more thoughtful and strategic.

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linuxhansl
"for Facebook to justify a $75-100 Billion valuation it would need to grow its
earnings by an order of magnitude"

Even if this was true (and personally I don't doubt that it is), it won't
matter. FB will go public at a valuation of $100bn, and people will buy the
stock. I am willing to bet on this.

The stock market is rarely driven by business fundamentals these days it
seems, but by perception and a form sheep mentality of the (mostly individual)
investors.

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veyron
There's very little evidence that the individual investors would buy in at
that range.

As evidence of faltering IPO demand, check out what happened to Zynga -- took
about 10 minutes to fall below ipo price.

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pbreit
The fact that Facebook is already trading at $100 billion is decent if not
strong evidence that investors, individual or otherwise, would buy at that
range. And Zynga quickly moved above its IPO price where it now sits.

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veyron
It moved above the IPO price due to the Facebook IPO announcement and the
related launch of the social media ETF (Tape C, ticker SOCL)

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chubs
I think this big picture 'losing ecommerce' is missing some nuanced analysis,
that in my experience is actually more interesting:

* I've had a better time with facebook ads than google ads, in terms of price and targeting * A lot of tiny businesses are doing all their promotion on facebook. I don't think it'd be too much of a stretch to say that facebook is the platform of the microbusiness. Eg like mums selling baby clothes, photographers showing their portfolio, things like that.

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ivankirigin
A facebook ad is the way that facebook will make money from e-commerce.
Facebook is a place to share with your friends, and everyone is falling over
themselves trying to get those buying something online to tell their friends
about it to get some viral lift. Facebook doesn't need to house the commerce
for this to work well.

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gabaix
It's worth repeating: Facebook have only a very limited aspect of our social
experience. Weaker social connections - reading someone's review, tweet,
repin, commenting on YC - are a magnitude more numerous than our limited
circle of acquaintances.

Facebook does not own the long tail of social.

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DevX101
Unlike most companies, facebook will have many years to iterate and many years
to get this right.

Don't count them out.

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coreyo
the statement is just as lost as the retailers are on facebook.

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shingen
Comeon, they aren't losing e-commerce. They never had it to begin with.

One massive problem is obvious: from the top down, Zuckerberg knows absolutely
nothing about retail, fashion, and so on. They can't engineer their way out of
not understanding the business.

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publicus
Facebook can merge with Pinterest in a 50/50 merger, then it can justify the
100B valuation!

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nitrogen
Note to publicus: it looks like this comment was flagged or downvoted enough
to get your account algo-killed. Your subsequent comments are dead.

