Facebook to Add Food-Delivery Option
October 19 2016 - 9:29AM
Dow Jones News
By Deepa Seetharaman
Facebook Inc. wants to be a one-stop shop for its 1.7 billion
users.
Over the past month, Facebook has rolled out several features
intended to help its users shop, keep tabs on events and gather
information from connections. The latest, launching on Wednesday,
allow users to buy movie tickets, order food delivery and book
salon appointments straight from the app.
"How can we make Facebook more useful in your everyday life?"
said Andrew Bosworth, Facebook's head of advertising technology and
local teams. Facebook's work in this arena would continue "over the
course of the next months and years," he added.
The moves show how Facebook is trying to move beyond its
traditional social networking function. In recent years, personal
sharing on Facebook has been declining, forcing the company to seek
other ways to keep its users hooked.
Earlier this month, Facebook rolled out Marketplace, a new
section within the app enabling buying and selling between users. A
separate mobile app for events on Facebook made its debut a few
days later. Users can purchase movie tickets through Facebook's
partnership with Fandango Inc.
"Given the kind of data that they have on people, they believe
there is a lot more utility they can provide," said Robert W. Baird
analyst Colin Sebastian.
The utilitarian tools represent a subtle shift for Facebook,
which in recent months has been emphasizing the social aspects of
its site. In June, it said posts from friends and family in its
news feeds would trump content from publishers and public figures,
making the site more personal.
Some of the recently added features bridge the gap between the
social and the utilitarian, such as a new recommendation feature
added Wednesday. In that tool, users can more easily ask their
Facebook friends for recommendations of restaurants or local
handymen and Facebook will plot those businesses on a map.
For now, Facebook says it won't use this data to serve ads and
drum up advertising revenue. Facebook says the features are shaped
by the way its users tend to interact with the site.
There are risks to Facebook's utilitarian strategy. Building
more useful features will require Facebook to bolster its search
function, which Mr. Sebastian described as "still not particularly
well-developed."
The success of the features relies in large part on how easy
Facebook makes it to find them, said Jed Kleckner, CEO of
delivery.com, one of Facebook's food-delivery partners. "How do
[users] learn about this without having to proactively go find it?"
he said.
Facebook also doesn't have direct control over the user
experience. Hours after launching the Marketplace tab, users
started posting guns, drugs and other banned items for sale.
Facebook apologized and halted the rollout of Marketplace until it
could get the issues under control.
Facebook is relying on partnerships with third parties to
support the new features rolled out Wednesday. Ticket sales are
operated by Ticketmaster Entertainment, Inc. and Eventbrite.
Write to Deepa Seetharaman at Deepa.Seetharaman@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 19, 2016 09:14 ET (13:14 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META)
Historical Stock Chart
From Aug 2024 to Sep 2024
Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META)
Historical Stock Chart
From Sep 2023 to Sep 2024