In the gold rush to make money on social networks like Facebook, it has taken a surprisingly long time for the social networking giant to fully integrate payments into its system. But last month, Facebook announced a partnership with PayPal that will allow users to use PayPal to purchase Facebook Credits – the default currency of Facebook. The PayPal deal represents another step for Facebook toward making purchases on the social network a normal part of our everyday lives. This is an important trend for fundraisers to watch.
Why should this be important to fundraisers?
IF Facebook succeeds in making the exchange of money via social networks a culturally normal thing to do, THIS would be a huge breakthrough for all commerce, including online fundraising.
Facebook already plays a large role in many people’s social lives and consumes a large percentage of their time online – adding regular commerce to that is the next big thing. Most fundraising on social networks has continually struggled to perform. The notable exception is event-based fundraising, which is seeing repeatable, predictable success when integrated with sites like Facebook. So be on the lookout for how Facebook payments continue to evolve and be adopted – it should be a valuable indicator of how successful we can be in fundraising directly through Facebook.