ReveNews
Facebook Shopping Application Roundup
There has been a lot of buzz this year with regards to Facebook Applications. Several people in the affiliate space have developed fun applications - Affiliate Summit Badware Protection and Udrink by Brian Littleton; Costume Party by Scott Jangro; and statustalker by David Lewis come to mind. Other affiliates, coming out of the coupon sector, have developed shopping applications. Right now I’m aware of (Updated from original entry.)
- HotSpots by ShopAtHome.com
- Shopping Bookmarks by Kim Rowley
- Shop Bargains by Mike Allen
- Online Coupons by GetMyThrift
- My Shopping by Marc Mezzacca
- Social Shopping Mall by Scott Aikin
- Radical Buy by Mark Cuban
- My Shop Space by Dan Holland
These different applications are merchant directories with coupon offers. The affiliates I spoke with concurred with what I’d heard - namely that there haven’t been many transactions in this space though it’s got a lot of juice. “it’s been slow in attracting new users … From a buzz point of view, however, it has definitely done that.”
Affiliates are making an effort to build, maintain, and promote these apps. Mike Allen posted an informational page and Scott Aikin a press release. (Others have done both as well.)
The features on these vary. Some send traffic to the affiliate site; others send traffic through an affiliate link to the merchant. Some seem to display automatically on the profile page while some do not. Some let you post offers that interest you. I imagine that it is difficult for the developers to pay close attention to their metrics, especially during the busy holiday shopping season, but I think there is a good market here and that best practices will emerge.
Facebook stubbed its toe recently with the Facebook Beacon incident, commented on recently by ReveNews blogger Duane Kuroda but I agree that this incident will soon be forgotten. I don’t have firm opinions on how Facebook will turn out as a shopping portal, but I wish these forward-thinking affiliates the best of luck with their efforts.
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Hey Brook et all,
Marc Cuban has a HOT new affiliate marketing app for Facebook that will bring AM to the average consumer. I’m really surprised no one’s talking about it. Maybe because I blogged it over the weekend when no one’s reading their RSS feeds.I just bumped the blog post back up today so more would see it.
Mark Cuban’s RADICAL Twist on Affiliate Marketing for FaceBook - Watch Out eBay
You forgot one. MyShopSpace.com Bargain Finder by MyShopSpace.com. Thanks.
Linda and Dan - thanks for adding these.
MyShopSpace.com Bargain Finder by MyShopSpace.com looks cool to me.
Many of the most successful applications today in FB has a built-in viral component to them that allows them to grow quickly. And plenty of developers are trying to come out with the next best thing for a potential profit.
While the majority of the successful applications are still for fun, several shopping applications have been introduced in the last six months in hope of turning this giant market space into a shopping portal.
They have a challenging road ahead of them though. Shopping by nature does not have that built-in viral compoent that forces a college student to forward the application to her friend.
How can developers get around this? One way is to integrate group activities with shopping. http://www.wisheo.com is a new upcoming group gift application that allows people to go together and buy group gifts for different occasion.
The viral component is automatically built-in here as several people need to go together and buy the group gift.