Facebook joins the unofficial Anti-Amazon Alliance

This week there is plenty of news including new features from YouTube, Twitter, Google, and Instagram. Perhaps the biggest social media story of the day is Twitter for the first time has added as a footnote to a tweet by President Trump about mail-in ballot fraud providing additional facts about mail-in ballots. (Meanwhile Twitter has not done similar for recent tweets by the president accusing someone of murder).

In my estimation though, the biggest news of the week with the potential largest impact is Facebook announcing ‘Shops’ for Facebook and Instagram. As explained by Facebook:

"Facebook Shops make it easy for businesses to set up a single online store for customers to access on both Facebook and Instagram. Creating a Facebook Shop is free and simple. Businesses can choose the products they want to feature from their catalog and then customize the look and feel of their shop with a cover image and accent colors that showcase their brand. This means any seller, no matter their size or budget, can bring their business online and connect with customers wherever and whenever it’s convenient for them."

This could be a major threat to Amazon as the largest online marketplace. For more details, I would highly suggest two pieces by the terrific Ben Thompson:


One excerpt:

What makes this a particularly bitter pill to swallow for Shopify is that Facebook’s move is really good for those merchants (and a far better solution than the overly complicated Instagram Shopping beta that didn’t integrate with outside services). At this point I’m going to assume that those of you who have bought a product from an Instagram ad outnumber those of you who haven’t, and the truth is that it is a pretty janky experience tediously filling in all of your shipping and billing details. Sometimes it is easier to just abandon your purchase for that item you had no idea existed 30 seconds ago. Facebook Checkout, on the other hand, would mean a purchase that is completed in seconds, not minutes. After all, if anyone knows who you are, it is Facebook! That is going to mean a lot more conversions on Facebook and Instagram ads in particular.

Other news from the week:

Paul GuestComment