Facebook Introduces Collections

And the product team at Facebook strikes again and what a brilliant strike it was! Facebook recently announced the launch of a new feature called Collections. According to AllFacebook, "Collections allow users not only to like, but collect, want, or buy products that brands share through images on the social network."

Facebook announced the feature through tech websites such as TechCrunch :

“We’ve seen that businesses often use Pages to share information about their products through photo albums. Today, we are beginning a small test in which a few select businesses will be able to share information about their products through a feature called Collections. Collections can be discovered in News Feed, and people will be able to engage with these collections and share things they are interested in with their friends. People can click through and buy these items off of Facebook.”

The select businesses testing the application are in the premiere league of retailers featuring the likes of Victoria Secret and Neiman Marcus.

Many of you may be thinking, "Come on Kyle. You are taking a major leap in comparing Pinterest to Collections. Yes... readers... I may be taking a major leap. It is my specialty. However, in the world of social media "a leap" is usually warranted.

While Pinterest and Collections have their similarities there is also one major difference. This difference exists in who is originally sharing the content through their networks. I have said time and before that the beauty of Pinterest is the ability for users to share the products that they create, love, and use in their daily lives. While Collections mirrors this sharing process the brand is still pushing the content FIRST to the masses.

It is hard for me to view Pinterest as an actual platform instead of just a feature. While the feature is brilliant... where does Pinterest go from here? Imagine the ability for brands to track the sharing and buying of products through Facebook and Pinterest without actually sharing the products themselves?

A truly seamless marketing experience.

TechCrunch said it best. "Beyond earning money indirectly, Collections could also challenge Pinterest. If users can Collect and share products on Facebook where they and their friends already spend time, they might have less need to join Pinterest. Collections certainly isn’t robust enough to dissuade hardcore Pinners, but it could evolve to become sufficient for casual curators who don’t want to start a profile on another social network."

And the other difference? Around 900 million users.

Do you want to try it for yourself? Go check out the Pottery Barn page and visit the link to its first Collections post. (Thanks TechCrunch!)