After reading Business Insider's "Facebook E-Commerce Is Real, And We Have The Numbers To Prove It," you can't argue that Facebook's ability to conquer the world is inevitable. Of course, Amazon may try to squash them, but we'll just have to see about that.
With Facebook always being on individuals' minds, "Who's commented on my status?," "I wonder what pictures Joe's gonna put up from last night," "Let's see if Jessica's got any bikini pics from her trip to Miami," and usability being a huge factor in everyone's lives, if Facebook were to have a simpler system with a richer selection of items, Facebook could be the next Amazon, or competing very closely with the online giant.
As consumers of the web, we love anything that hosts everything we love on one platform. So what are our biggest vices today? Social networking and social media, online video, and shopping.
If YouTube were to have some better integration into Facebook, it could have even more distribution than it has now. By combining your YouTube account with your Facebook account, hosted on Facebook's platform, where you get a small dose of new recommendations for awesome videos to watch, including a list of videos your friends are watching, you don't have to fuss about opening a new tab and going to YouTube, plus you can read your real-time news feed while you watch some of the craziest videos of today.
But back to how e-commerce will be conquered by Facebook, Facebook can encourage more e-tailers to take advantage of the marketplace and then work to integrate new items from people's select brands, into users' Facebook news feeds, which can allow them to successfully multitask with the things they love the most. I'll admit, as much as I love my Shop It To Me alerts, I hate having to have that one extra email in my inbox, click that link, and view it all in a new tab. If I'm checking my Facebook already, wouldn't it make sense for me to be able to check the latest styles and steals at the same time?
Danny Wong runs e-commerce group Blank Label, and is an avid online shopper. He would love to see his e-tail sites Blank Label and Thread Tradition better integrated into Facebook's marketplace, and hopes that Gilt would show new items only, especially watches, so he doesn't have to scan through almost every link under the "Gifts" section.