It could the salvation of f-commerce; social commerce and payments company Chirpify has announced the general availability of Chirpify for Facebook, the first platform to allow businesses, non-profits and consumers to buy, sell, donate and raise funds directly within the Facebook Newsfeed.
We’ve already seen Chirpify at work on Twitter and Instagram, and have seen similar efforts by innovative company Soldsie, but now in-stream commerce could well become the norm, with users only having to simply leave a comment to make a transaction.
From the host’s perspective, it’s a straightforward process. A listing is created in a Chirpify dashboard by inputting information such as cost and shipping time, then with the click of a button the listing will go live in both consumers’ and the brand page’s Newsfeed.
From the consumer’s perspective, it’s even more straightforward. They need only type ‘buy’, ‘donate’ or ‘gimme’ into the listing’s comment box, and Chirpify will make the payment happen automatically (users need to be registered with the platform first, of course).
The company already has the likes of Adidas, Victory Records, the Portland Trailblazers and bands Owl City and Neon Trees on board, and is pretty pleased to be the first platform to offer in-stream commerce across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
“By expanding Chirpify to the top three major social media sites, we’ve created the only social commerce platform that enables businesses to list and distribute products to each social media platform, and consumers to purchase in-stream on each without ever leaving,” said Chirpify CEO Chris Teso. “We are excited that businesses like Adidas sought us out to develop frictionless commerce for Facebook.”
As we discussed a couple of weeks ago, social commerce has always fallen foul of its separation from true socialbility. In-stream commerce addresses this disconnect well, so this launch could mark the beginning of a second coming for f-commerce.
