Last year, Alvenda created the 1-800-Flowers Facebook store, widely covered by press and self-billed as the first e-commerce store inside Facebook. This week, they’re showing off their partnership with Hallmark.

Visitors to Hallmark’s fan page who click on the Shop tab will see this:

Once inside, visitors can shop for physical cards – yes, real-not-virtual, made-from-trees cards!

Select a card, and personalize it with a message like so:

Then, enter shipping information, pay with credit card – and wait to hear the delight in your friend’s voice when they call to thank you for a real-not-virtual card.

The presumed benefit of such an app is that fans can now make purchases without ever having to leave Facebook, where they spend most of their online hours anyway. If you read the report in my last post, you’ll know that this meets one of our Success Criteria for Facebook page marketing: Call to Action.

Personally, I didn’t find the user experience very friendly, and would assume that a Facebook app has less inventory than their actual site.  I’d probably just as well visit the brand’s website for an optimal shopping experience. But hey, that’s just me.

I also couldn’t actually make an order, so I don’t know if an order would publish to my news feed. Though if it did, that would fulfill another Success Criteria for Facebook page marketing: Advocacy, or in this case: spreading word of mouth through news feeds (fyi, the average user has 130 friends).

In any case, the idea of bringing shopping experiences into Facebook is important because there’s not just value in the transaction, but in the relationship building between fan and brand, and word of mouth from fan to friend.

Something to keep an eye out on.

The 8 Success Criteria For Facebook Page Marketing

As a sneak peak, here’s the 8 Success Criteria below.  Within the paper, we define each criteria, describe how we measure brands, and give an example or two that we found.

We evaluated 30 major brands, selected to represent a cross section of industries.  Using the criteria above, and a custom 5-point score card we developed, we ranked these brands as follows (click on the image to view a larger size):

In advance of this event, I’ll be spending time researching relevant case examples. What could be more fun than marrying two topics I love: Technology and shopping?!

So how are companies using social technologies to improve the customer shopping experience? Here are 7 examples I’ve found recently:

1. Recommendations, Reviews, and Ratings

Recommendations, Reviews, and Ratings are standard for any e-commerce site.  But using our social log-ins to access friend recommendations makes this information more powerful. Imagine shopping for a laptop at a Best Buy store, using one of the display computers to read reviews on a particular model, then filtering and finding a friend’s review. Next step: Call your friend for more information. Powerful.

Example: TurboTax’s microsite friendslikeyou.com relies on Gigya’s social brokering technology to allow customers and prospects to log in using their Facebook, MySpace, or Twitter IDs and search for product reviews by  friends. Below, the site is scanning its database for my Twitter contacts.  It turns out none of my friends have written a review, so TurboTax refers me to complete a short questionnaire so it can find reviews by “people like me.”

2. Facebook Likes

The Facebook Like button is similar to recommendations, reviews, and ratings, in that its a form of social proof. I’m identifying it separately because it has the potential for much greater reach. Liking a product or brand is an extremely lightweight activity, lending itself to greater usage. And, every Like publishes to an average of 130 friends’ news feed, igniting word of mouth through layers of extended networks.

Example: Levi’s shoppers can Like any item and add a comment when it publishes to their news feed.

3. Wish Lists

Having a public wish list is like having a wedding registry, except year round. Imagine signing up for a public wish list on your favorite retail site, say Powell’s or DSW, and publishing this on a Facebook app for all your friend’s to see. You’ll never have to exchange a birthday gift again! I haven’t seen such an app yet, but here’s the public wish list feature from Urban Outfitters.

Example: Urban Outfitters shoppers create public wish lists and share these with their friends, as well as search for their friends’ wishlists.

4. Group Buying

When Groupon first launched, I’d send deals to all my friends to make sure there’d be enough people buying the deals. The idea was that a minimum number of purchases were required for the deal to “tip”,” usually at least a couple hundred. These days, that doesn’t ever seem to be a problem – at least in San Francisco – as Groupon has become wildly successful. It’s a great business model which offers a triple win for Groupon, local business, and consumers. Naturally, Groupon has spawned imitators like LivingSocial, SocialBuy, Poggled – and now Yipit is aggregating them all.

Example: Group buying and a-deal-a-day rolled into one with Groupon. It’s also added Facebook Connect so you can share, purchase, and experience Groupon deals with friends.

5. Purchase History

Remember when Facebook launched their Beacon social advertising program? Seems like they still haven’t learned to let users opt in, not opt out. Blippy is like Beacon without being jammed down your throat. Shoppers opt in and share their purchase history with friends, or publicly. Public purchase histories have the same social impact as friend recommendations and reviews. Imagine iTunes having a purchase history pane within its application window. What a great way to discover, and buy, new music.

Example: Blippy users share what they’ve purchased, for how much, and where.

6. Loyalty Check-Ins

Foursquare is picking up a lot of steam, though I admit I’m not one of their early adopters. My circle of friends tends to loathe the habit of checking smartphones during dinner. For those without this problem, checking in to a favorite cafe, bar, restaurant, etc. means potentially being recognized with reward points. Businesses can learn more about their customers, identify and reward customer advocates, and promote word of mouth. Location based services (LBS) include Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, Brightkite, Google Latitude, Yelp, and possibly Facebook later.

Example: First, Starbucks teamed up with Foursquare to offer Barista badges and discounts to Starbucks “mayors.” Now, The Standard Hotel has reportedly launched a campaign to offer reward points to people who check in at their hotels via Topguest.

Photo credit: johnhaydon

7. Real-time co-shopping

Finally, here’s an example Charlene Li tweeted about yesterday. Mattel is using Decision Step’s ShopTogether technology on its  e-commerce site Shop.Mattel.com. Two or more customers can browse and chat together, making shopping decisions in real time. Charlotte Russe has been using ShopTogether for years to help teens co-shop for prom dresses.

Example: On Shop.Mattel.com, customers can invite their friends or family to shop together, browsing and chatting with each other in real time.

Of course there are more examples of how e-commerce sites are using social technologies to improve the shopping experience. I’ll follow up again with more examples in a later post. In the meantime, please feel free to share examples you’ve spotted.

A quiet storm is slowly brewing against Facebook and my hope is that it gets more attention from mainstream users. Not because I don’t like Facebook or want to see it fail, in fact I value the connections I’m able to make and keep up on Facebook. I only want people to be more educated about what they share on Facebook – and how this evolves in Facebook’s quest to compete with Google and Twitter, and their public feeds of data.

For now, it seems most users just don’t know or don’t care.

Fortunately, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is on the case, advocating for our digital rights. In a series of articles, they’ve shed important light on recent Facebook changes. I strongly urge you to read the following articles, listed here in the order they were published:

Facebook further reduces your control over personal information

How to opt out of Facebook’s instant personalization

Facebook’s eroding privacy policy: A timeline

Facebook’s “evil interfaces”

EFF seeks to protect innovation for social network users

6 things you need to know about Facebook Connections

It’s fine, I suppose, if Facebook wants to become more open in order to be competitive.  I just wonder if 1) this openness will decrease Facebook’s utility as users become more cautious about what they post and 2) there isn’t room for another social network that respects users’ privacy and be profitable.

In the meantime, here’s a great analogy from a Hacker News discussion:

It’s akin to the lobster-in-a-boiling-pot scenario.

Put a lobster in already boiling water and it screams, stick it in room-temp water and heat to boiling and the lobster won’t notice it’s being cooked until it’s too late…

To stay up to date on Facebook and other digital rights issues, follow EFF on Twitter. If you’re in San Francisco, register for PrivacyCamp this Friday (it’s free).

Facebook, I’ve got a funny feeling about you. There are plenty of companies I don’t trust, but Facebook – you’re in a unique position to know a lot about me. Yes, Google too – and I’ll say more on that in a minute.

On the one hand, you tempt me with the promise of a truly social web, extending my social graph across the internets like tentacles stretching far and wide. A web where I can meet my friends online wherever I go – start discussions, compare purchases – generally share activities, links, resources, sentiments – and benefit from recommendations which help me filter some of the noise.

On the other hand, I’m fearful that you’ll distribute all those connections, activities, behaviors, and patterns all over the web. I’m not the only one who’s worried. Look see:

Facebook’s eroding privacy policy timeline

Why it is too late to regulate Facebook

Facebook’s evil, genius plan to own your life

Facebook’s great betrayal

Okay, I get it. You went into it a$$ backwards. You started with a closed platform and have been backtracking ever since, to make (y)our UGC more public. You’re jealous of Twitter. Heck, your data isn’t being archived by the National Library of Congress!

I’m not naive. You have to make money to be a sustainable business. And, you’re going to make a lot of money with all our data. Why wouldn’t you? But that doesn’t mean I have to go along with all of this without a fight. Because ultimately, I just don’t trust you.

The simple thing that irks me to no end, and is the most obvious indication of a disingenuous approach:

I was looking through my privacy settings, recalling articles written in the past week about how to opt out of your new “instant personalization” feature. Examples are here, here and here. It’s such a maze of settings, confusing language, and opt in defaults – that all evidence indicates you’re purposely trying to disorient me – in order to get me to share more than I want to.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation shared similar thoughts this weekend. It asked its fans for a new term to describe “the act of creating deliberately confusing jargon and user-interfaces which trick your users into sharing more info about themselves than they really want to.”

Some of these were really good: “bait-and-click” (my favorite), “bait-and-phish,” “confuser-interface-design,” and “Facebaiting.”  They’re going with “evil interfaces.”

In their words, “Design is difficult, and accidents do happen. But when an accident coincidentally bolsters a company’s business model at the expense of its users’ rights, it begins to look suspicious.”  An evil interface “trick[s] users into doing things they don’t want to.

Now, on to Google. Google may have more data on me than the NSA, and there’s plenty of debate around its lofty claim: Don’t be evil. For example:

Debating the vices and virtues of Google

Is Google evil?

And wow, look at this commentary first published when Google launched Gmail: In Google we Trust? When the subject is email, maybe not.

But what did Google ever do to me? Aside from the Google Buzz debacle, which yes – I was admittedly miffed about but have been willing to overlook since they’ve got a pretty good track record.

It goes without saying that Google has made the web better. It’s made it faster, more relevant, and more useful. And no, Google doesn’t confuse me.

Others have already expounded on Google’s virtues. Like Louis Gray who trusts Google implicitly (Still waiting for an evil Google?). Or Chris Messina, who works for Google, extolling the virtues of an open web. Heck, Jeff Jarvis wrote an entire book about why he trusts Google (What Would Google Do?).

I dug up an old Wired article (Google v. Evil) in which the author interviews Google co-founder Sergey Brin:

One thing Brin is sure of: On the side of evil lies trickery. I ask Brin to imagine, for a moment, running his company’s evil twin, a sort of anti-Google. “We would be doing things like having advertising that wasn’t marked as being paid for. Stuff that violates the trust of the users.”

And finally, this final paragraph in the same Wired article especially resonates today in the context of Facebook’s privacy erosions:

It’s inevitable that a company of Google’s size and influence will have to compromise on purity. There’s a chance that, in five years, Google will end up looking like a slightly cleaner version of what Yahoo! has become. There’s also a chance that the site will be able to make a convincing case to investors that long-term user satisfaction trumps short-term profit. The leadership of the Internet is Sergey Brin’s to lose. For now, at least, in Google we trust.

So, when it comes down to my relationship with the two most dominant sites on the web? I trust Google a whole lot more in making decisions that are in the best interests of its users – and the internets at large.

For now, at least, in Google I trust.

Time to update this old Time magazine cover:

I don’t use Facebook Connect myself, since I’m careful about my Facebook privacy. (Good luck though!). I prefer using my Twitter ID to log in wherever I can. My profile and tweets are public anyway – and doing so makes the registration process frictionless. If I can connect with Twitter friends, all the better. Twitter Connect, imho, is their killer feature.

I love Disqus, the commenting system that integrates my online ID across nearly all the blogs I visit. It seems like every blog is using Disqus now – enabling blog readers to comment with one identity across the web.

Expected moves by Facebook and Twitter will continue to socialize the web.

A couple weeks ago, Twitter announced @anywhere, which will allow us to connect with anyone on Twitter from anywhere on the web. You’ll soon be able to hover over a reference to a person or brand – and see their latest tweets or follow them with one click.

It’s rumored that Facebook will soon announce the ability to “Like” content on any page, making a seemingly trivial online action both universal and significant.

So not only are we growing more comfortable being ourselves on the web, which personalizes and socializes our experiences online – we’re now inheriting a common set of actions and behaviors on the web – where every site you go to allows you to interact with it in a similar way.

While I’m cautious in some ways and know that the continuing socialization of the web is inevitable, I’m still excited about the evolution. Less friction, and more context and interoperability make for a web experience that many of us can’t fully fathom but can definitely appreciate.

If you’re interested in these ideas, read Chris Messina’s 5-part series on the social web, The Social Agent. Warning: Messina admits it’s tl;dr, or “too long; didn’t read.” Put it on your Instapaper and read it later.

You may have heard last week that a Seaworld killer whale killed its trainer. You can find some commentary here and here. This woman was well trained and knew the risks of her job. Yet her death isn’t without controversy. Animal lovers have come to the defense of Shamu and animals everywhere. And Seaworld has responded appropriately.

The @shamu Twitter account sent out this tweet last Thursday:

Seaworld has responded via its blog, with a message from the president, a tribute to the trainer, a statement from the family, and more.

And, most importantly, Seaworld keeps its Facebook fan page open to a lively debate – only shutting it down momentarily last week because of “inappropriate photos and videos.” Comments on the page include angry vitriol, reasoned criticisms and defense, and condolences for the trainer’s family.

The truth is, many of those with the sharpest criticisms were probably never fans of Seaworld or any other animal park. Having a platform for their remarks, at Seaworld’s fan page and blog, may show that the company is listening. More likely, it helps contain some of the nasty comments that would otherwise be circulating the rest of the social web – and be searchable later.

I think animal parks can serve important educational purposes, though I’m not a big fan of small concrete pools and training animals to do tricks.

Still, Seaworld responds appropriately – really, the only way it can, once it’s embraced a two-way conversation with customers.

These results follow from their USA Gross National Happiness Index, published in October 2009. Facebook data scientists have put together a sentiment engine which analyzes word choice in status updates. The idea, generally accepted by social psychologists, is that what we write provides a window into our “emotional and cognitive worlds.”

According to Facebook, positive words include “happy”, “yay” and “awesome,” while negative words include “sad,” “doubt” and “tragic.”  Read more about how words are collected and rated by LIWC, or the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count.  This tool was adopted by Facebook in its own research.

[If you hadn't read the report last year, It's no surprise that the happiest days fall on holidays, with Thanksgiving ranking at the top. The saddest day was January 22, 2008 - the day of the Asian stock market crash and Heath Ledger's death (really?). The second saddest was Michael Jackson's death.]

I plugged in all my Facebook status updates from November 1, 2009 to today and came up with the following analysis via LIWC:

And for good measure, here is an analysis of my tweets:

Nothing earth shattering here, but keep in mind this is one tool and I’m using the free version. (How I’m equally personable and arrogant/distant beats me!) Plus, you can’t deny the significance of this kind of data across 400 million Facebook users worldwide. Instead of knowing what people are searching for (per Google), Facebook tells us what people are thinking. This kind of information is valuable to everyone from social psychologists, to cultural anthropologists, to politicians, to marketers.

Companies should already be monitoring sentiment around their brands wherever people are talking. Facebook. Twitter. Forums. Comments. Buzz? I’m not sure what tools exist to do this well – so if you’re using one to monitor sentiment around your brand, please let me know.

Facebook currently hoards its social analytics, but you can bet that a sentiment engine will be on the market in the future.

Oh, and if you’re interested in reading more: This NY Times article discusses how a happiness index might be a better measure of “national self-worth” than economic indices.

I’m loving the idea of geolocation, and can’t wait until it becomes more widely accepted. Geolocation, or location based services (LBS), is the “identification of the real-world geographic location of an Internet-connected computer, mobile device, website visitor or other” (Wikipedia).

It’s already available on our mobile apps, for example, Yelp or Google Maps. You log on, your device asks you if it can use your current location, and you’re off – to (in theory) discover new and cool things in the nearby world around you.

What’s cooler than such basic uses of geolocation, is geolocation for social networking. For instance, if you’re using a location-enabled device, tool, or service, you can opt in to notify your social network of your current location. Google Latitude offers continuous location sharing, which allows you to connect with friends who happen to be nearby. Foursquare uses a “check-in” model instead, which may be easier for new users to stomach. Twitter and WordPress are announcing geolocation tools as well. Here’s a neat article on ReadWriteWeb about how geolocation improves Twitter.  And check out Twitter 360, a new Twitter client that really takes it to the extreme by integrating augmented reality and geotagging. Turn on your iPhone camera and see arrows indicating who is Tweeting near you. It’s just a matter of time before Facebook rolls out a more prominent, though probably less invasive, role for location too.

Honestly, I can’t wait for geolocation to become more mainstream. It may be intimidating now and remain an opt-in service for the next few years. But I anticipate that geolocation will become opt-out within 5 years, meaning that most services will set geolocation on by default. It’s the next step towards making our social networks really social. Location gives us another layer of context – a very valuable one. Just think about Facebook status updates posted by local friends or Tweets from Twitterers in the area – much more relevant.

When this happens, you’ll be able to log on to Facebook and see where your friends are posting from and how they’re moving around. Right now, I’m in Southern California for a week visiting family. On my flight down, I was scratching my head trying to remember people in the area I’d want to connect with. That doesn’t even account for the people who happen to be in town on a visit, and obviously not think to let me know.

I’ve loved Facebook ever since I first joined, because it gave me a way to stay in touch with friends who live far away. I’ve been looking forward to the day when I can say, “Hey Jennifer, I’m in Seattle finally. Let’s meet up!.” But how much more compelling will Facebook be when I can see on my news feed that Jennifer posted an update from New York City, where I happen to be for a weekend conference?

It’s a great feature for friends and family, a little less so for our wider social networks. But on Facebook, geolocation integrates well – our closest friends and family are on it, we’ve created different profiles, and we’ve set privacy controls.  That’s why geolocation will be Facebook’s “killer app.”