Facebook Inc. (FB) Adds CropUp to E-commerce Stable

Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) has not only been working to be a strong presence on mobile, but it has also been working to be a strong e-commerce platform  to compete with the likes of Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) As there was some speculation that the e-commerce angle was fading away due to some lost business in a couple of its services, there might be a sign now that the company might be turning things around in this area.

CropUp is now in public beta on the Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) platform, and this may likely help some e-commerce firms on the platform to be more available to users, which may help jumpstart the e-commerce marketplace on the social network. The way this new solution works is, that this gives companies a chance to bypass the need for a storefront or main Facebook page and it allows retailers to present their products or services in the flow of the social netowrking (essentially the News Feed, in Facebook’s case) and allows those products or services to be purchased directly from that spot in the feed.

With this concept, retailers can register themselves with CropUp and provide products, descriptions and pictures of the products or services, and each will be assigned a CropUp URL. Users of the social network can then buy these products directly off that special URL and CropUp would help the retailers track orders and anlytics of the transactions.

CropUp CEO Alec Coughlin said, “CropUp is engineered to accommodate real-time social commerce marketing. With the most advanced mobile offering in this space, individual merchants can provide their social audiences with products directly within social applications that would otherwise be lost in a marketplace, and larger brands can test products, provide pop-up experiences, and offer limited quantities to social fans.”

What do you think? Will this enhance the social experience for retailers and increase commerce traffic on Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB)? Would you be more interested in products if they were in your News Feed instead of set aside elsewhere on the site? Let us know your general thoughts about this in the comments section below.

DISCLOSURE: I own no positions in any stock mentioned.

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