Facebook Bucks - "My Take"

Facebook brings in payment system

Excerpted from David Gelles Financial Times article - Published: June 2 2009

Facebook is rolling out a new internal payments system, testing it on three different applications on the site, a move that could help the social networking giant become less reliant on advertising. The system will allow users to purchase Facebook "credits" to buy virtual goods across the social network's services and third party applications. Facebook will take a cut of every transaction.

Gartner analyst Ray Valdes says. "Social networking sites have suffered with monetizing [their services], but this leverages [the fact that] users are there on Facebook."

My Take

This is an important step advancing the ease and convenience of the coming social economy. In a short while, conducting social commerce transactions will be more commonplace than swiping your debit/credit card at an ATM or a retail checkout machine.