Facebook is launching a set of new ecommerce features that could turn it into your primary destination for everyday services, such as ordering food, buying movie and gig tickets, or planning a night out.
As part of the update, local business pages now include more direct interaction options. For example, restaurants in your vicinity that offer delivery via Delivery.com or Slice allow you to place orders right from their Facebook pages.
Facebook already allows users to purchase food from select merchants (including pizza delivery from Domino’s and Pizza Hut) using bots, but it clearly craves a bigger slice of the online food ordering industry — which was valued at $9 billion last year.
Facebook is also expanding its recently launched partnership with Fandango to allow you to buy tickets for a larger variety of movies from a film’s official page. The same goes for concert and event tickets, courtesy of Ticketmaster and Eventbrite. Additionally, Facebook is debuting a “get quote” button for local services and the option to request appointments. The latter has been available in emerging markets since August, and is catered toward salons, and spas.
Another new tool introduced on Wednesday is a “recommendations” feature that can be turned on within your Facebook posts. This fundamentally lets you ask for advice regarding local businesses from friends, whose subsequent suggestions will be mapped out and saved in one place for you to access. Facebook has also added a recommendations bookmark to the sidebar next to your News feed which, when clicked, opens a new section on the site where you can discuss all things local with your network.
That’s not where the platform’s obsession with social discovery ends. In the coming weeks, Facebook will be revamping its Events dashboard to serve you more local recommendations regarding what’s happening in your locality. These suggestions will be based on what’s popular among your friends, and in relation to pages you’ve liked — similar to the features available in its Events mobile app, launched earlier this month.
Facebook’s ecommerce and recommendations features are currently being rolled out to U.S. users.
