From: http://www.brandchannel.com/home/post/2010/10/28/Social-Media-Watch-102810.aspx
Facebook Ubiquity: Baseball, Commerce, Credit
Posted by Sheila Shayon on October 28, 2010 01:00 PM
"Take me out to the ball game" has new meaning as Facebook (and Twitter) change the way fans 'watch' the World Series. As the World Series opened in San Francisco baseball fans in the stands were outfitted with smartphones and laptops while virtual fans congregated on social networking sites to share every pitch, hit, strike and out. MLB.com CEO Bob Bowman cites Facebook and mobile as an increasingly important hub for fans, telling USA Today: "Baseball is well suited to constant updates for every pitch, and the smartphone is the ideal vehicle to view live entertainment."
Facebook is also an increasingly important player in the emergence of e-commerce store-fronts, which began over a year ago when 1-800-Flowers launched a store powered by Alvenda – the beginning of sales transaction within the FB environs. One drawback, however: Alvenda uses Adobe Flash.
Flash forward a year, and new FB apps (free and fully integrated) don’t require Flash, such as Payvment, now the lead shopping platform on FB. Using PayPal’s “Adaptive Payments” API, this app "transforms" Facebook "into a gigantic department store where users can keep their purchases with them across thousands of Payvment-powered storefronts on Facebook and do the checkout at any point.”
And then…there’s Facebook Credits: “Boiling the story down to its bizarre essence, brick-and-mortar retail establishments are now selling real cards holding imaginary money to buy things which don't actually exist," notes MediaPost. Already available at Target stores, FB Credits gift cards can be used for in-game purchases in FarmVille or Bejeweled Blitz or at Walmart and Best Buy. Walmart offers $5, $10 and $25 gift cards, and Best Buy will sell them in $10, $25 and $50 increments.
On the darker side of social media, there's this distressing item (via Mashable): a young mother today pleaded guilty to shaking her three-month-old son to death — for crying while she played FarmVille on Facebook. It's not the first case of a virtual addiction overtaking real life (and sanity) — nor, we fear, the last.
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