How Easily Should Social Networks Reveal Friends To E-Commerce Sites?
Written by Evan SchumanSeptember 15th, 2009
The foundation of the intersection of social networks and E-Commerce is that consumers will be much more likely to trust and buy from a retailer if they know that their friends are already buying from that chain. The Catch-22 of such an approach is that it's difficult to get a consumer to name friends without some huge immediate benefit to that consumer. And, no, the unearthing of friends who already shop at an E-Commerce site is seen as a benefit to the retailer, not to the consumer.
One approach that has been tried is leveraging services such as Facebook Connect, which lets a user log onto Facebook and then log onto an E-Commerce site (using the same browser) and allow that site to access Facebook names—with the customer's permission—without the customer revealing a Facebook password to the E-Commerce site. But then it runs into the limit of the system's inability to display a friend's shopping pattern without that friend's permission. ("Hi, Brenda! I see that you're shopping at Phil's Pervert Video House, too.")
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One Comment | Read How Easily Should Social Networks Reveal Friends To E-Commerce Sites?
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Our Comment SPAM system is getting very aggressive these days and has been blocking legitimate comments. If you post a comment and don't see it appear within 2 hours or so, can you please send a heads-up to customer-service@storefrontbacktalk.com? Ideally, please include the time you posted the comment. That will allow us to try and hunt for it. Thanks! P.S. We're working on fixing the system, but we don't want to lose any valuable comments in the meantime.
Our Comment SPAM system is getting very aggressive these days and has been blocking legitimate comments. If you post a comment and don't see it appear within 2 hours or so, can you please send a heads-up to customer-service@storefrontbacktalk.com? Ideally, please include the time you posted the comment. That will allow us to try and hunt for it. Thanks! P.S. We're working on fixing the system, but we don't want to lose any valuable comments in the meantime.
-Christine
October 2nd, 2009 at 9:50 am
A few points of clarification:
“What if the customer, for example, has only one or two friends listed? Wouldn’t this notification of “one of your friends has shopped here” be a privacy violation?”
=> The system requires that the shopper have at least 50 friends before showing a count of matches. (That limit doesn’t apply to friends who have opted in to having their names shown, of course.)
“Wouldn’t they be more likely to simply pose that question to their friends directly?”
=> Many people are hesitant to blast all their friends with “Hey, anyone know about X?” messages. People are much more likely to seek advice when they know who to ask. And sometimes, there’s no need to ask – just knowing that friends also shop at the same store is enough.
“Most merchants would rather the system stay silent unless a friend is discovered to have shopped there.”
=> If there is no first-degree friend match, TurnTo shows other things like friends-of-friends, neighbors (based on zip code), popular items, and highly recommended items. So the system can still be helpful to the shopper while also giving the feeling of a crowded, buzzing store.
George Eberstadt
Founder and CEO
TurnTo