Facebook is just full of surprises today. After releasing its new Mentions app earlier, the company has just announced the latest in its long history of experiments: giving you the ability to buy things straight from your News Feed.
At least for right now, Facebook is keeping the option limited to “a few small and medium-sized businesses in the US” while they look over feedback. Still, the move itself isn’t all that surprising considering Facebook’s recent push to unite advertisers with their customer bases. And while privacy has been a major concern with these moves in the past, Facebook assures us that they have got it under control:
We’ve built this feature with privacy in mind, and have taken steps to help make the payment experience safe and secure. None of the credit or debit card information people share with Facebook when completing a transaction will be shared with other advertisers, and people can select whether or not they’d like to save payment information for future purchases.
You should be seeing the “Buy” option on both the web and mobile versions of Facebook starting today. So what do you think — would you actually be willing to make purchases based on what you see in your News Feed alone? [Facebook]