Editor’s note: This article was first published in September 2011 as a news piece; the announcement expected “in two weeks” was speculation at the time. Facebook then had 800 million users; Google Plus was shut down for consumers in 2019, and eBay and PayPal separated in 2015.
PayPal announced at the annual f8 conference that it is preparing “something big” with Facebook. They didn’t want to give many details for now, although they’ll probably make it public within two weeks. Over at TechCrunch, they speculate that the biggest giants of each sector could come together, in line with current market trends.
Social (Facebook), the giant of online shopping platforms (eBay), the giant of online payments (PayPal) and GSI Commerce (e-commerce). If such a collaboration is confirmed, and bearing in mind that Facebook has already reached 800 million users, we’d be looking at the biggest commerce platform in the world, all of it dominated by the social networking giant, Facebook.
This would confirm a forecast some experts made about Facebook’s future: that the big social network will be less and less about the “social” side as a form of entertainment and will become a commercial platform, where businesses and users have their meeting place and can buy everything they need in one place.
Facebook wants to be Twitter, it wants to be Google Plus, it wants to take Groupon’s place, and it wants to become the largest database of users and businesses in the world. Over time, Facebook will become a virtual shopping mall, where it could host something like the Japanese ZozoTown idea, becoming your clothing and accessories store and even your regular supermarket. The war to control the commerce of the future is already under way, and Mark Zuckerberg is playing his cards very well.
Featured image: Cristiano Tomás, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
