Facebook To Tighten E-Commerce Hooks Next Month
Written by Evan SchumanFacebook next month will add an API that will allow shoppers to automatically link to data about a favorite retailer and perhaps their purchases, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday (March 9). “Facebook users can already add information from a variety of sites to their news feed, the stream of stories they see when they log in. But the profile is more sacred ground and is a stronger signal of a user’s interests,” the story said.
Called the Roadmap Open Graph API, Facebook openly describes the new capability and says it is slated to be available in this year’s second quarter. That the API will be rolled out at Facebook’s developer conference next month is new but not unexpected. “The user will then have [the retailer's site] listed in their list of connections on their profile as pages are represented today,” the Facebook description says. “Any content that [the e-tailer] publishes will show up in the stream on Facebook like it normally would. And, any time the user searches on Facebook, [that retailer] will show up prominently in search results.”
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I have strong reservations about the 'individual' certification and posting of that information for merchants. Can you imagine the potential employee poaching that might occur? The implications when competitors can look up how many are certified with each of their competitors? 
-Christine
