Facebook’s New Buttons: A New Step into M-Commerce

Investors are paying close attention to Facebook, which will report their earnings this afternoon amidst high expectations.

Much more important to Facebook’s future are a couple of small-scale tests that many on Wall Street aren’t paying much attention to: the “Save” and “Buy” buttons, which the social media juggernaut has quietly rolled out in small-scale tests.

Facebook has been pressured to add new verb buttons for a long time. “Like” is the gold standard of social media, and users have cried out for a “dislike” or “hate” button for a long time. Those are unlikely to ever come—why would Facebook give users an opportunity to “dislike” the people who actually give Facebook money, namely the big brands?

“Save” and “Buy” make much more sense, of course. With the “buy” button, which Facebook is testing with a group of small businesses, it allows businesses to buy an ad on Facebook’s newsfeed that lets users not only to click through, but to actually make a purchase directly. Of course, Facebook will take a cut on all of those sales.

It still might be cheaper for retailers in the long run. A “buy” button makes transactions faster, easier, and more efficient for users, but it also means the infrastructure that handles the purchase will be handled by Facebook more than the small business—which means lower overhead costs. Think of the button as an opportunity for a mom and pop shop to outsource their web development, marketing, and IT management services to the social media giant.

The “save” button has a less obvious but still important function for Facebook’s total revenue. One of the social media’s problems has been its lost cool—a lot of teenagers see Facebook as that stodgy site where their lame parents keep sending them Candy Crush requests. Teens have flocked to Instagram, WhatsApp, and other Facebook properties. That’s good for Zuckerberg & Co., but it’s even better if they can get everyone, teens and older folks alike, to stay on Facebook a bit longer.

“Save” does exactly that. With Google Reader gone and legacy portals like Yahoo offering a limited amount of high-quality content, Facebook is quietly taking over their former role as a content discovery platform. If they can achieve this feat, helping people discover content more easily, people will go to Facebook more often. And that means more eyeballs to sell to marketers.

With both buttons, Facebook is looking to be more than a social media site: it’s looking to become Google, Amazon, Ebay, and Yahoo all at once. Now we just need to see if they succeed.