In the past, we have used the Facebook Like button as a baked-in promotional mechanism to drive referral marketing of deals, and that formed the core functionality of our product (see screenshot below for an idea of how we did it with our SaaS group buying solution for online retailers). After nearly 6 months of collecting data and experimenting with the Facebook Open Graph API and plug-ins, we have decided once again to use Facebook like how every other business uses it – as an independent, bolt-on, add-on sharing mechanism, and nothing more. We will no longer be giving Facebook VIP status in our product.

Here are some problems with Facebook:

1. The Facebook API changes too often. The plug-ins are buggy, the API changes without notice rather often, and there are too many rules constraining how developers can use the API in building applications. As a platform, it is unstable, period. It may be a good idea to use Facebook as a platform for consumer applications, but it might have been a mistake for us to use Facebook as a platform for an ecommerce application.

2. Facebook is overhyped. Personally, even though Facebook actually has 600 million active users, developers still tend to overestimate how many people actually 1) have a Facebook account, 2) use it regularly, and 3) are comfortable using it as a third-party authentication method. Many consumers across different niche markets are simply not familiar with how Facebook works; developing Facebook-only applications marginalizes this segment of users, who may be substantial in number.

3. Facebook is still mainly social for most, and exclusively social for some. We are still not completely convinced that Facebook can be an effective platform for ecommerce or any commercial activity, i.e. does anyone even care about commercial offerings on Facebook? Low sales on so-called f-commerce platforms seem to support our view. Some businesses may be too quick to assume that, just because Facebook works for games, it will work for ecommerce. Of all the new variants of ecommerce, the one that might actually take off is, in our view, mobile commerce.

So which direction are we now taking with our product, Zuupy CrowdDeals? We are now focused on point-of-sale transactions, working more like a sales tool that facilitates group buying transactions and processes, leaving the marketing of deals largely to our customers (online retailers themselves). We hope that this small product pivot would serve as a better fit to what the market wants. After all, Likes are ultimately useless. Sales are what matters, and that is what we aim to bring to our customers from here on.