Social commerce goes mainstream

It’s happened…

Facebook has met Disney and the future of social commerce will never be the same.

As reported in the New York Times this morning, Disney has launched “Disney Tickets Together” on Facebook.  In advance of the opening of Toy Story 3, the new application on the Toy Story fan page, not only lets you buy tickets for the movie at your local theater in advance, it also gives you the opportunity to invite your friends to go with you.

While Disney isn’t the first company to sell tickets and other items directly from Facebook, it is definitely the validates.  The marriage of social media and online commerce is the next great social mountain to climb.  Why drive your Facebook fans to a separate e-commerce website when you can sell stuff to them from Facebook itself.  There you can show your friends what you bought on your Wall, and encourage them to buy similar items.

Capitalists, drool here.

For anyone selling tickets to events, consumer electronics, clothes or…just about anything the possibilities are endless.

But before we have a funeral for the traditional e-commerce website, a cautionary note.  Perhaps the only thing that can stop this marriage of e-commerce and social media, is the social media platform itself.  Recent missteps on privacy and custom landing pages makes one think that Facebook could at any point “change the rules” and kill the goose that’s about to lay the golden egg.

This is something that is, as always, worth watching.  As is the success of Disney’s current social commerce application which has the chance to kick-start the act of selling on social media platforms as fast as you can say, “To infinity and beyond!!!”