technology
TheFind – Social Shopping With Facebook Integration
TheFind , the world’s second largest shopping search engine, unveiled an integration with Facebook today which provides a personalized shopping experience. Users who log in to TheFind’ site through Facebook Connect can see the total Like count plus the names and faces of their friends who Like certain stores and brands. These indirect recommendations from friends and the entire Facebook population help users form opinions about companies. There’s a bigger story here, too. By providing relevant product search results to shoppers it has slowly grown to become the second-largest shopping search site on the web, according to comScore data . It has managed to build a product search business, hooking users by providing long-tail results in Google over the years, even as many startup competitors have foundered. However, social shopping has not taken off on Facebook to the degree that many people expected, as users typically aren’t ready to get out their wallets and make a purchase. Through Facebook’s Open Graph, TheFind is figuring out what users and their friends like, then complement search results with this information. By joining social features with its existing technology, the company has a promising shot at figuring out the magic combination of search, social and shopping. TheFind also pulls in a user’s existing Likes of stores and brands from Facebook to show only search results from those companies in a tab called Shop Like Me. This can create a much more efficient shopping experience for users who price check between a few trusted retailers or who strongly prefer products from a selection of favorite brands. Instead of using web search, which produces shopping results from across the price and trendiness spectrum, Shop Like Me helps users hone in on products that fit their style and budget. Instead of opting to use Instant Personalization, which led to privacy issues and ill will towards partners such as Yelp , TheFind subtly includes the Facebook login button in the corner of their home page. “We didn’t want to suddenly change the whole site” which could alarm those who don’t use Facebook or who have concerns about privacy, says Ron Levi, TheFind’s VP of Product. To further alleviate fears, TheFind has included a link to a privacy explanation wherever names and faces from Facebook are used. If a user wants to state an affinity for a brand or store without sharing it publicly, they can add it the TheFind’s proprietary “My Finds” list instead of liking. TheFind not only pulls in your Likes from Facebook proper, but from any Open Graph-enabled site. Users can also Like and Unlike brands and stores on TheFind, with feed stories about Likes being published back to Facebook. Users can’t currently Like individual products on the TheFind because the company says that while not every brand or store has implemented The Like Button on their products, most already have a Facebook Page for their company to which Likes can be assigned. Julie Bornstein, SVP of e-commerce at popular cosmetics retailer Sephora explains: “the Like button is great on Facebook, but it’s more powerful on TheFind when you’re in a position of shopping – they’ve monetized the Like.” Brands and stores now have an added incentive to start a Facebook Page and accrue Likes, as it will help their products stand out from others on social shopping sites. “Gone are the days of Proctor & Gamble broadcasting mass marketing messages…[now] it’s guerrilla retail” said Levi. The Facebook integration will help companies with large Like counts, but also those with loyal, densely localized fan bases, as others from the area who come across their brand or store will be prone to have friends who Like them. Currently, Like counts don’t influence the search rank of results on TheFind, but Likes may be integrated into its ranking algorithm in the future. Also forthcoming is a mobile app upgrade which will include the new social functionality. Other major e-commerce sites including Amazon and Urban Outfitters have recently added social features, showing a growing trend. Social recommendations are proving to hold significant sway over purchasing opinions. Sephora’s Bornstein agrees, “how can large numbers of people Liking something be wrong?”
Facebook’s Recent Negotiations with Twitter and Apple Have Yet to Produce Results
While Facebook may be rapidly signing up media companies to use its social plugins, and advertisers to use its performance ad system, its relationships with potentially competitive technology companies aren’t so straightforward. Most recently, Twitter and Apple have so far failed to work out business partnerships with Facebook over how the companies can share user data. In Twitter’s case, it released an upgrade to its Facebook application in June that, if you had it installed, showed you all of your Facebook friends with Twitter accounts, and made it very easy to start following all of them. Facebook is requiring that partnership terms be in place for all big partners, and Twitter apparently didn’t have that when it launched the app (the simpler ways it accessed user data, like syncing status updates, was not an issue). Maybe there is some sort of legal or technical short-term reason for the shut-down. And maybe Facebook didn’t want to make it so easy for its users to go off and start building its social graph on Twitter. Yesterday, Apple launched a music social network, Ping , that at first seemed to have some sort of Facebook integration. It was going to allow you to invite friends from Facebook to use Ping, presumably some sort of friend-finder or mass-invite interface. We don’t know for sure what integration there might have been, though, because the feature never appeared in iTunes 10. The fact that it didn’t launch is especially surprising because Apple included the Facebook integration in a screenshot in its presentation in San Francisco yesterday, and currently has an app Page — and has advertised Facebook on its Ping splash page since yesterday . Apple marketing executive Phil Schiller even mentioned it yesterday to Kara Swisher of AllThingsD … which brings us to the reason for the feature’s no-show. Minutes away from talking to Schiller, Apple chief executive Steve Jobs told Swisher that Apple could not agree to Facebook’s “ onerous terms .” While the Twitter app was clearly borrowing from Facebook’s social graph, we don’t know what Apple wanted specifically. These are not the first instances of Facebook restricting a large tech company’s access to its otherwise open platform. When Google launched Friend Connect in 2008, Facebook blocked the service from accessing its user data . It essentially argued that Google was not ensuring that users understood how their data was being used, and while it said it was working with Google, it has never turned on full access to let users do things like export their friend lists or other data to Friend Connect (or other Google products, like Orkut). These are the exceptions to the rule, of course. Facebook does partner with potential rivals. For example, take a look at MySpace’s recent integration of Facebook , where it first asks for lots of Facebook user data, then makes itself a one-way publisher to Facebook. In this case, Facebook and News Corp were apparently able to come to an agreement. So what’s going on now? Twitter and Apple are making public statements about their dissatisfaction with Facebook’s terms — applying that sort of pressure is a standard negotiating tactic. Twitter’s status has been pending since June, and it recently reverted its Facebook app from having a broken message for the friends-follow feature, to just showing its other, simpler syncing features as it tries to work out a deal with Facebook. Here what Twitter tells us about the matter: Several weeks ago, Twitter released an update to its Facebook application: The ability to see which of their Facebook friends have attached their Twitter and Facebook accounts and choose which of those friends to follow on Twitter. Facebook blocked the ability to access a user’s list of friends within the application. As we’ve not yet been able to come to terms on a solution, we have removed references to the update in the application to avoid user confusion. There are a few ways this could go. Twitter, and/or Apple could launch a more meaningful integration with Facebook soon — as in the next couple of months — which would show that Facebook is more concerned about the details of the agreement than the concept of giving potential competitors access to its users. Facebook could also do what it did with Friend Connect, and say publicly that there are privacy and security issues. Or it could just keep access off, and not say anything. The problem with that last route is that it could encourage other potential partners to be more cautious about making business deals with Facebook. Also, Apple hasn’t send anything beyond Jobs’ statement yesterday, but here’s Facebook’s official response to Swisher. Facebook believes in connecting people with their interests and we’ve partnered with innovative developers around the world who share this vision. Facebook and Apple have cooperated successfully in the past to offer people great social experiences and we look forward to doing so in the future.
Gorgeous 21:9 LCD TV from Philips Goes 3D
Think what you will about the ultra-widescreen, 21:9 format Philips is pushing, but you can’t deny that its cinema-proportioned Full HD LCD TV is gorgeous . Now, Philips plans to push it even further, with a 58-inch, 3D version of the device.The device, called Philips 3D Cinema 21:9 Platinum, sports a direct lit LED screen with a 2560×1080 resolution, 400Hz picture processing, and Philips’s Ambilight technology, which illuminates the area behind the TV in order to reduce eye fatigue and produce an immersive viewing experience.And if you think you’ll never use all that horizontal screen estate due to the lack of titles available in 21:9 format, you can watch regular TV programming on one side while browsing Philips’s Net TV on the other.The price tag, of course, is too high for most consumers. At around €4000 ($5100), there are plenty of high-end TV sets to be found on the market, but this TV is truly unique. For those who want to enjoy their movies as they were meant to be seen on the big screen, and in three dimensions, there are currently no better options out there.The Philips 3D Cinema 21:9 Platinum is slated to launch in the UK later this month. No date has been set for a U.S. release. For more Tech coverage: Follow Mashable Tech on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Tech channel Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad