The title of the article that I chose to read was “Why Pinterest Trumps Facebook at Social Commerce, For Now” written by
Forbes author Jeff Bercovici. This article talks about why social media sites (mainly
Facebook) should not be selling products. Pinterest a new website that offers
users a collage like set up allows for users to post their products on their
page, allowing everyone else to look at them and purchase items. It also allows
for users to post photos allowing friends and others to comment on them.
Facebook in return wants to
setup an e-commerce section on their website. As if Facebook does not already
have enough money coming in, through games, music, and other income sources
they now want to add a shopping section. Many analysts say this will not work
for Facebook. They compared the situation to a bar scene. Facebook is a bar
where you can go and catch up with old friends or potentially meet new people.
You do not want to go shopping when you go to a bar and this is the exact
reason why a shopping section on Facebook would not be successful. Pinterest is
a new website gaining new users quickly and Facebook is worried that they will
lose users to Pinterest because users have the ability to make purchases and
look at products on their website. “for any company that has an e-commerce
presence, they absolutely have to be paying attention to Pinterest.” This quote
came from a Gap executive.
I think it’s important that Facebook focus on achieving a high profit. After all, that’s what companies are here to do. However, I’m not sure they’re going about doing so the right way. Pinterest has a very unique section of the Social Media market and I do not believe they will be stealing users from Facebook. Nobody goes to Pinterest to keep in contact with old friends – that’s what Facebook is for.
ReplyDeleteMany people threaten that they will leave Facebook but seeing as Facebook controls such a large percent of the population, social urgencies tend to beat out any remaining anger. This may change through time if more people were to migrate to Pinterest or Twitter but those social media sites simply don’t have the same connectivity as Facebook has and so I believe it will be rather difficult to replace (even Google, being the technology behemoth that they are, appears to have failed in taking the social media market with Google+).