Referring to this article in The Globe and Mail, this post is a response to Vanessa’s post about the potential success and safety of Facebook’s new gift service.
This new online gift service is Facebook’s attempt at entering the e-commerce market and answering the skeptics that do not believe in the hype of Facebook advertising. It’s clear that Facebook, with it’s one-billion-and-growing users and large user information database, has the ability to turn a profit for companies looking to sell their products using this service. I disagree that Facebook could compete with sites like Amazon, Ebay, and even Etsy, who are seasoned e-commerce competitors that have a positive reputation for being reliable and safe.
The success of this new project is inevitably dependant on the safety of user’s private information on addresses, credit cards and the like. In the past, Facebook had several problems with security. There was a time when users’ mobile phone numbers were displayed publicly on their profiles after connecting to the site/application via their phone. Recently, Facebook also changed users’ displayed emails to ones with Facebook domains. These incidents make consumers wary of Facebook’s security, which may affect the future success of its service. Unless Facebook keeps user information private and utilizes a consumer-trusted method of payment like PayPal, the success of its gift service will be limited.
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