The Feed: Facebook’s Not for Selling

Facebook Store: Most brands and retailers have a Facebook presence in the hopes of increasing brand awareness, engaging and gaining new customers, and ultimately increasing sales. Pepsi, for example, posts contests for user-submitted content on its FB page, and Ticketmaster offers “Fan Deals.” A recent report from Forrester says that Facebook will not be a driving force in ecommerce, contrary to all the buzz about social media marketing, social shopping, social everything. Do you “like” brands or stores on Facebook? Has that made your life any better besides getting a small discount or a free t-shirt here and there? I definitely don’t “like” companies (besides DIGIDAY) or retailers on Facebook for the same reasons I don’t accept Facebook group invites or Fanpage invites: it’s all crap I don’t want in my newsfeed or anywhere else. It’s clutter and it’s annoying. Facebook is Facebook for a reason, it’s a social network for, you know, people. If I want to do some shopping online, I’m not going to look on Facebook first. I also don’t care if one of my Facebook friends bought a certain product or went to a certain store. But um, I guess good luck with the whole online retail platform thing. WSJ