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Image via Mashable
When Facebook started hyping shopping on the site back in 2010, people were predicting "f-commerce" to become the next major online marketplace. The concept doesn't seem to have caught on with shoppers, however. In a recent piece on the state of Facebook commerce, Bloomberg is reporting that over the past year, Gap, J.C. Penney, and Nordstrom have all opened and closed storefronts on Facebook. We can think of some other major fashion brands in that category, too: ASOS, for one, went hard in that direction a year ago, launching an f-commerce shop in January 2011 with the company’s entire 150,000 product catalog. But when we checked back on ASOS' Facebook page this week, the shop was empty.
What this growing f-commerce graveyard indicates is that as all-powerful as Facebook may be, the social network actually doesn’t drive shopping. In our favorite quote from the Bloomberg article, an analyst at Forrester Research put it like this: “There was a lot of anticipation that Facebook would turn into a new destination, a store, a place where people would shop, but it was like trying to sell stuff to people while they’re hanging out with their friends at the bar.”
We took a quick office survey of our Racked editors: Turns out as much as we all love to shop (and believe me, we do), none of us have ever purchased anything through a Facebook shop. We're curious—have you? Let us know in the poll after the jump.
· F-Commerce Trips as Gap to Penney Shut Facebook Stores [Bloomberg]
· 5 Ways Retailers Are Winning Big With Facebook Commerce [Mashable]
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