Facebook Commerce 1.0?

Some good thoughts here about turning Facebook into an e-commerce site.

From: http://www.openparenthesis.org/2010/12/28/facebook-commerce-1-0-jc-penneys-usablenet-app

Facebook Commerce 1.0? JC Penney’s Usablenet App

Published on Tuesday, December 28 2010

Last week I participated in two roundtable discussions at the PluggedIn Ventures Summit on Ecommerce.(There were lots of interesting tweets during the summit – search for the #pisummit hashtag). When the issue of Facebook for commerce (or F-Commerce) came up on the Social Commerce panel, I pointed to JC Penney’s new Facebook app store as an example of what’s wrong with F-Commerce. In this post I’ll expand a bit more on why I think that’s the case, and what that means to retailers looking to understand how Facebook fits broadly into their multi-channel strategy.
During the initial roundtable of the day, the discussion turned to Facebook, and its role as the new portal:

#pisummit – Facebook is the new AOL?Dec 21 via Twitter for BlackBerry®Darius Razgaitis
mrdarius

While I can understand the impulse to draw parallels between the role AOL held for many (especially media) companies in the early days of the (commercial) internet, I think we’ve got to be careful to not miss the lesson the portals never properly learned: on the web, everything else is always one click (or one tab, or one window) away.

#pisummit People spend time in FB, but they also have 10 other tabs and windows open – portal isn’t the window through which I view the webDec 21 via TweetDeckJohn Eckman
jeckman

In other words, Facebook may be the new portal, but does the concept of a portal even make sense in a world of multi-tabbed browsers, multi-tasking users, and multi-device access? If there ever was a world in which a portal could truly be the user’s starting point and the window through which that user viewed everything on the web (already a questionable claim), that day has long passed. Many web users spend significant amounts of time “on” or “in” Facebook, true, but what else are they doing at the same time?
The question becomes more than just academic when you come at it as a large scale retailer trying to create a strategy for Facebook.

JC Penney’s store, which launched just before the holiday season, is a Facebook Application (powered by Usablenet) which enables the whole shopping experience without leaving the social network. As Consumerist put it:

JCPenney just snagged the “anchor store” spot on Facebook, becoming the first retailer to let shoppers purchase crap directly from their Facebook page application through a fully integrated e-commerce platform.

FastCompany was a bit more polite (not sure Penney’s PR likes the term “crap”):

Today J.C. Penney became the first major retailer to make its entire catalog available to shoppers within Facebook—not just to peruse, but to buy.
Starting now, you can purchase any of the 250,000 items that the department store sells online from its Facebook page. The company expects many sales will take place as a result of shoppers seeing items listed in their friends’ news feeds and then clicking through to the product pages, still within Facebook.

The application itself is really quite simple. It relies on approach familiar to most of us from Usablenet’s mobile versions of websites: minimizing / transforming the existing site (server-side) and providing the transformed content to the new context – in this case, presenting a transformed version of JC Penney’s ecommerce site in an iFrame inside Facebook. (So long as you are in a browser session in which you’ve already authorized the app, you can actually load it outside a Facebook context by opening a new tab and visiting https://m.usablenet.com/ma/jcpenney.com/index.html?auth=yes).

Landing Page of the new JCPenney Facebook Store application

When the user clicks on of the categories on the left, the app loads (via JQuery) new content representing the subcategories, on down to specific shelf page and then a product detail page, as you can see in this brief video:

The major problem with this approach is that the application never changes the top-most frame’s URL as the user navigates. Start on the landing page, drill down to Men, then to suits and sportcoats, then to a specific coat. Now, back up to the shelf page. D’oh! If you’re like me, your habit is to hit the back button in the browser (or even the keyboard shortcut for it), but if you do that here, you’re SOL. (If you’ve opened the store in a new tab or window, you may find your back button disabled, depending on your browser – but if the tab or window you are in has a history, back will take you to the last url you visited before entering the store).
The problem is that the app isn’t changing the original url you were on once you entered the store, so no new entries are created in your browser history. This was a problem with frames the first time around, and remains one with this approach. (Aside: in WPBook we handle this by targetting all links to top and creating fully formed apps.facebook.com/app/path style URLs).
Usability issues aside (and yes, there is breadcrumb / back navigation just below the top navigation – but it is easy to miss), my bigger issue with the application is just how non-integrated with Facebook it is. JC Penney doesn’t seem to be taking any advantage of the fact that I’m already logged in to Facebook and have granted the application all kinds of privileges in the process.
When you first load the application, you’ll get this permission screen:

Permissions Request for Shop JCPenney Application

So you’ve granted the app permission to access your name, photo, gender, and “any other information I’ve shared with everyone” – which for most folks is a lot of other information. But then if I go to the “store locator” within the app, it doesn’t offer to use my location from my profile (or ask for the extended permission user_location, which an application can specifically request):

Store Finder inside Facebook - doesn't leverage user_location

So maybe there isn’t much leverage in the store locator inside Facebook – or perhaps it might be better at that point to request the location from the browser rather than from Facebook. But the same lack of integration more glaringly comes up when you go to check out. For example, say I found an LCD TV I wanted to purchase. (The broken image icon in the screenshot occurs randomly throughout the app – seems to be something amiss with the translation into Facebook App in some cases):

Department page for House -> Electronics -> TV and Video

Clicking in to a TV, and adding it to my bag, I then proceeded to click on checkout, and get this screen:

Checkout Process - No Prefilling with FB info?

Granted, the email address I used when registering at JC Penney’s may or may not match the one I used as primary at Facebook, so it is a good idea to not assume they are the same, but why not request my email from Facebook and prefill it for me, so that I don’t have to start from scratch? More to the point, why do I need to register at all? You can check out without registering, and the only difference seems to be associating an email address and password with the account. But given that I’m logged into Facebook and granted the application permission to access my info, why not just allow me to then use my Facebook identity to later access my account? Why do I need yet-another-password at all?
Assuming I didn’t already have an account at JC Penney’s, and clicked Register, I get this (after an initial screen for email and password):

Billing Address page for Checkout

The only thing defaulted here is the USA, which I think is not because I’m in the USA but because it is the only allowed option. On to payment then, let’s use a credit card:

Credit Card Info

To me this feels very much like ecommerce circa 1999 – multistep checkout with a broken back button, no useful defaults (couldn’t we at least assume the name on the card might be usefully prefilled with the name I gave two screens ago? Editable, sure, but blank?), and changing look and feel – note that the buttons on the credit card screen are suddenly blue where they’ve been (somewhat) consistently red or grey.

E-commerce on FB? Currently e-tail experience is circa 1999. @jeckman#pisummit#gothammediaDec 21 via webAndy Harrison
cloutmobile

My larger point, though, isn’t just to critique the usability of the application. First to market doesn’t always mean best-to-market, and I’m sure the usablenet solution (which simply translates the existing store, requiring no significant platform effort on the retailer’s part) offers a compelling time-to-market advantage.
My point is that we need to question the very purpose of Facebook stores: Why is it supposed to be useful to me as a consumer to browse the entire catalog and make a purchase inside Facebook?
I get that retailers want to be where the audience is – and I’m a big proponent of distributing your digital footprint throughout the web. But what such stores fail to do is customize the experience to its context. What the user wants to do in Facebook is not the same as what the user wants to do on JCPenney.com, and (equally important) what the technology enables is different.
What retailers need to do in looking at Facebook as an opportunity is innovate: create opportunities for user experiences that take advantage of the Facebook ecosystem, both in terms of technology and user expectations. Just as mobile application developers have come to understand that what makes sense on a phone or a tablet isn’t exactly the same set of functionality that makes sense on a web application designed for desktop browser use, F-commerce developers and designers need to prioritize and understand that subset (or maybe it is a superset, entirely new) of functionality that makes sense in context.
We need, in other words, applications actually designed for use in Facebook, not more retailers putting their whole store in an iframe-based application just because they can. I think this is why virtual goods based applications have so far proven much more successful than real-world goods in Facebook: they’re native to the platform, and designed directly for it, not “adapted” to it.

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Related posts:

1. Social as a Layer: Sears’ Social Commerce Experience
2. Pecha Kucha Boston 4
3. WordCamp NYC, WPBook, WordCamp Boston
4. App Culture
5. Facebook Changes, WPBook

Tags: conference, ecommerce, F-Commerce, facebook, fcommerce, JCPenney, social networking, Social Shopping, Usablenet

 

• Previous: Gilbane Boston: Content as Strategic Social Object

 

1 Comment. Leave a comment or send a Trackback.

#1 • David Fishman said on December 28 2010:

 

John -
This is a great analysis. Very well thought out! The last paragraph really drives home your point.
“We need, in other words, applications actually designed for use in Facebook, not more retailers putting their whole store in an iframe-based application just because they can. I think this is why virtual goods based applications have so far proven much more successful than real-world goods in Facebook: they’re native to the platform, and designed directly for it, not “adapted” to it.”
I would appreciate it if you took a pass at our Facebook ecommerce appl.
http://apps.facebook.com/guessstylestudio/?ref=bookmarks&count=0

The world’s smallest online businesses: Blogshops

There are not a lot of articles written in the western media about blogshops.  Here is one from about 2 years ago.

Note that blogshops here are referred to as minishops and microbusinesses.

The world’s smallest online businesses: Blogshops

Blog, IT & BusinessAdd comments

The US has about 20 million businesses with only one person–the owner.  Except for rare cases like plentyoffish.com (the #6 online dating service in the US, and #1 in Canada, serving hundreds of thousands of love-seekers every day), one-person microbusinesses are small money individually, but together add up to $1 trillion per year in revenue.

The number of free or cheap online tools for running a business is growing (see this article from mashable.com with 270 tools for small business).  Open source tools for business are increasing in sophistication.  But what about those times when even an eBay shop or PayPal button is too complicated for the budding online business person?

Enter the blogshop, a term used in Singapore to describe teenagers setting up a free blog with items for sale, usually funky fashions or accessories.  Forget shopping carts or credit cards for most blogshops–buyers simply email or leave a comment for what they want, then do a bank transfer, or hide ‘concealed cash’ in an envelope.  The buyers pick up their goods by mail, or by meeting at a subway station.  Sometimes buyers band together for a ‘shopping spree’ to Taiwan or Korea to pick up the latest fashions.

Blogshop directories like blogshopr.com and emall.sg list over 300 blogshops in Singapore.  A survey in the Straits Times found that 30% of blogshop owners spend over 20 hours per week on their sites.  It’s not the route that I would choose for starting an online store, but sometimes ease and simplicity win over functionality.

The story quoted a young business school student as saying she learned much more about business from her blogshop than her ‘boring’ lectures.  I have a difficult time imagining a ‘boring’ business school lecture, but that’s just me…

Blogshops are not the same as an EC site

This article shows how EC site owners do not want to be lumped together with blogshops, as she goes into detail to explain the differences.

Also worthy are the points made about the operationalization of a shopping cart fashion business, especially the costs involved.

From: http://www.summerdoll.com.sg/news/9/Please-Do-Not-Compare-Summerdoll-To-A-Blogshop!.html

Please Do Not Compare Summerdoll To A Blogshop!

Posted on 21st Dec 2009 @ 6:26 PM

I am sick of the (admittedly few) people who complain that the pricing of Summerdoll designs is too high and should be lowered to those of "blogshops". I shall replicate here my reply to an email I received, in which I was told:

"Just a feedback, being an avid online shopper, I think your dresses are priced way too high (as compared to other blogshops who also self-manufacture)!"

Other blogshops? (I also scoff at the term "self-manufacture" coined by blogshops.)

My reply:

"Hi xxxxxxx,

Thank you for your feedback. I would like to explain that the pricing is due to the following reasons:

1) www.summerdoll.com.sg is not a "blogshop". It is a website whereby shoppers may shop and make their purchases immediately due to the shopping cart facility. The website costed about $3000+ to build and about $280 every year to host.

2) Apparel on the multiple blogshops found here only come in one size, a "free" size, which is not consistent and varies from design to design. (Have you considered why they only "self-manufacture" them in a "free" size? Perhaps they are not really designed and sewn by them but rather *gasp* cheap mass market clothes bought from China/Bangkok?) Moreover, fabric used is usually the inferior kind manufactured in China which is thin/see-through and was dyed with inferior dye, leading to much lower cost of fabric but also much lower quality in the apparel. Such apparel often shrink/run in the wash (for a good example, look at the poor quality of Forever21 clothes). In contrast, fabric used to sew my label designs are imported from Japan and Korea, which cost more but are of higher quality.

3) It costs much more to design and sew your own unique apparel than to buy ready-made clothes from China/Bangkok. 

4) Unlike a "blogshop" which does not have any overheads, I had a boutique in Holland Village for a year and my new boutique in Millenia Walk will be ready in June 2010. Pricing does factor in the cost of rent, and prices of apparels on the website have to be consistent with store prices. Prices of all brands with physical shops are always higher than "blogshops", no matter which brand, due to the honest fact that rent has to be paid. (The few shops in Far East Plaza, Orchard Central and Wisma which sell dresses at $29.90 all sell dresses which are made cheaply and are of EXTREMELY poor quality. Maybe teenagers do not mind wearing cheap thin see through dresses made by the hundreds but other women do mind.)

The benefit to shoppers is that they are able to try on all designs before purchase, unlike purchasing from a "blogshop" where, if one is honest with oneself, most of the purchases are usually unsatisfactory/does not fit/of inferior quality/was not what you expected/looked nice in the photo but not on you. Most die-hard blogshop shoppers will never admit this but this is the feedback their mothers give me, that most of the purchases end up not worn/thrown away.

5) Lastly, Summerdoll customers are more discerning shoppers who would rather own a few good quality dresses, of which only less than 20 in each design is sewn, than a hundred poor quality mass market dresses, where each design is sewn in the hundreds and chances are high you will bump into another woman wearing the same apparel. (It also costs much, much more per dress to sew very few rather than hundreds in each design.) 

I hope you will understand that I do not earn a higher margin per dress compared to these blogshop owners. Due to the direction in which I have chosen to go, I do not compete with blogshops for the teen market."

I do not wish to be harsh with my reply but honestly! I am just so sick of having to explain the obvious! I have decided that life is too short and I will just say whatever needs to be said.

Another thing which I have just remembered while typing this entry, I have extremely satisfied customers from Shanghai who shop at my shop. The feedback I receive from them repeatedly is that the idea that it is much cheaper to buy dresses in China is a misconception, and that only the lousy quality apparel are cheap in China. They tell me that dresses in China of similar quality to my designs cost more in China than in Singapore, which is why they always wait to do their shopping at my shop when they are here in Singapore.

I may regret this entry tomorrow and remove it. Then again, I may not.

(Out of curiosity, do other local designers also receive emails telling them that they are too expensive, you know, "compared to other blogshops"? I would love to see the look on their faces. I mean, you guys do realise that Summerdoll designs are much cheaper compared to other local designers, right?)

Off-lining blogshops.

From http://ujustfashion.blogspot.com/2010/12/offline-blogshop.html

Off-lining blogshops.

This is a key development, in my opinion, for many blogshop owners who would like a store to showcase their stuff but are unable to afford paying rental.

In this case, Offline Blogshop (run by UJUST blogshop) rents a shop and sub-rents it to a number of othere blogshops.  This is located in Sunway Pyramid, a major shopping hub in KL, so these participating blogshops (20 of them) are able to secure a prime offline shopping location.

offline blogshop

Offline Blogshop, 

and located @ Lot F1 AV.149 & 150, Asian Avenue, Sunway Pyramid.

Participated by 20 other blogshops,
do support and come to its grand opening,
on this coming New Year, 1st Jan 2011 (11 a.m)

10% will be given for every item (1/1/2011)

This is their entry on their Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Offline-Blogshop/182583901757204?v=info

Website:

http://www.offlineblogshop.com

Company Overview:

We are located at Asian Avenue, Sunway Pyramid.

Mission:

Taking online blogshops into a tangible offline shop

Description:

It is probably fewer than five years that we Malaysians become less skeptical about online businesses. Blogshop is yet another newly sprang online shopping phenomena, of which bloggers sell different products in their blogs, turning them into virtual shops at just about zero cost. Slowly and somehow, everybody started to call these blogs as the blogshops. In fact, although intuitively understandable, blogshop is still a term so new that you can’t find the definition in Cambridge nor Oxford Dictionaries. Offline Blogshop takes 20 unique fashion blogshops, some of which are famous blogshop names in Malaysia, to a tangible shop, where blog-shoppers and the general public can 'surf' the blogs not only in virtual but also in real world! First of its kind in Malaysia!!! (read less)

Contact Details

Email:

bsean@offlineblogshop.com

Phone:

017-6155975

Shopatron Integrates with Facebook

From: http://www.bicycleretailer.com/news/newsDetail/4940.html This is another incident to show the rise of social commerce. Here, an ecommerce application is added to a social network page, like Facebook, to enable social commerce. http://www.bicycleretailer.com/news/newsDetail/4940.html Shopatron Integrates with Facebook SAN LUIS OBISPO, CA (BRAIN)—Shopatron has released its first “social stores” on Facebook, allowing fans of its client brands to browse products on the popular social network. Social stores integrate e-commerce into Facebook with a “Shop” tab that allows members to browse product catalogs directly from the social network. If a Facebook user likes a product, they can click “Buy Now” and they’re redirected to the brand’s online store to complete the purchase. Because the product catalog is located in a tab clearly marked “Shop,” it’s a less intrusive way to reach brand loyalists, leaving the other sections of Facebook for fan interaction. “Social shops are a great way for a brand to monetize social marketing,” said Ed Stevens, founder and CEO of Shopatron. “Since people are already discussing products with their friends on Facebook, why not make it easy for members to buy them directly?” Shopatron social stores are currently available as a beta release feature for clients of the retail-integrated e-commerce provider.

Why Chocolate Companies Are So Sweet on Social Media

From: http://mashable.com/2010/12/29/chocolate-social-media/

Why Chocolate Companies Are So Sweet on Social Media

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In a past life, Dana Zemack was a chocolate expert and traveled throughout the country leading chocolate classes, workshops, tastings and parties. These days, she is a public relations pro at tech PR firm LaunchSquad and works with wonderful and innovative tech startups and emerging companies. To find Dana, tweet at @danamarcelle or check out the LaunchSquad blog.

O, chocolate. You stole our hearts the day we met you (in Mexico, about 3,000 years ago). Since then, royalty and aristocrats have feasted on goblets of you, armies have sustained themselves by snacking on you, a whole town in Pennsylvania was built for the milk version of you, and copious lovestruck teenagers have swooned over heart-shaped boxes of you. The world has a deep, lengthy and curious history with chocolate.  As a result, chocolatiers and chocolate-makers have the luxury of commanding an audience that is undyingly passionate about their products.  

In a world where communication between brand and consumer continues to become more and more personalized, conversational and transparent, chocolate companies have a unique opportunity to connect. Most of those discussed here, which are smaller, artisanal brands, simply don’t have a ton of marketing spend at their disposal. Obviously, social media is a critical and powerful marketing tool. So the big question is, how do these companies maximize the fan love? 

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Neighborhood Darlings: Engaging Your Local Community

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Bean-to-bar chocolate companies — as in those that make pure chocolate from scratch — are few and far between. Though the number of American artisanal chocolate makers has grown exponentially within the past six years, having a chocolate factory in your hometown is a pretty sweet and special treat.

The folks at Missouri-based Askinosie Chocolate work with a local baker to create special cupcake recipes using Askinosie’s chocolate. Then, every Tuesday (known at Askinosie as Cupcake Tuesday), the baker makes around 200 special cupcakes. According to Lawren Askinosie, whose official title is “Pursuer of the Passionates,” local residents get wind of the week’s latest flavors on Twitter, storm the Askinosie shop and the cupcakes sell out every week. During this past summer’s “Hide and Eat” campaign, the company hid chocolate bars inside the storefronts of other local businesses, posted clues on Facebook and Twitter each day and incited local residents to rush the different stores to discover the bars.  

Strategies to engage the local community are in a whole different realm than those focused on national or international fans. Neighborhood companies can offer their local fans something that no one else can have. It’s all about creating something really special, narrowing down the channels through which people can find out about it, and mixing things up a little by partnering up with other nearby businesses. Part of the allure of any artisanal food company is that engagement online can, with a little effort, lead nearby fans directly to something delicious that can be eaten on the spot. 

We can learn a lot from the raging food truck obsession that’s taken over our big cities. Scharffen Berger, a leading American chocolate maker who is in a very different place in the chocolate market than the smaller companies included here, recently partnered up with New York City bakery Sweetery’s dessert truck, Street Sweets, to promote a Scharffen Berger chocolate cupcake recipe contest. Thousands of Scharffen Berger chocolate cupcakes were given away during two days in late October, with Twitter updates offering the truck’s whereabouts around the city. 

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Keeping It Real: Catering to Each of Your Audiences

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Fans of Vosges Haut-Chocolatier can find their truffles, chocolate bars and other sweets online, at certain specialty retailers and at a handful of small Vosges boutiques called “Purple Houses,” after Vosges’ purple branding. Boutique patrons at the different locations range significantly, from the SoHo regulars who stop by the shop every couple days, to enthralled Las Vegas tourists who never dreamed that chocolate could be infused with wasabi and ginger.

Clearly, different locations have different personalities. Each store has its own Twitter account, authored by the store manager. Vosges sets basic branding guidelines and then encourages managers to let their personalities shine through and cater their Tweets to their local customers. Followers of the Chicago O’Hare International Airport location will see tweets like “Bliss in B6!” — as in, gate B6, which is where the store is. According to Caroline Lubbers, who heads up Vosges’s national social media, “bliss at B6″ was tempting enough to make one traveler tweet back that she was actually excited for her Chicago layover. 

Then there are the brand’s nationally focused social media campaigns. Vosges is a luxurious, glamorous brand, and a major part of the mystique of its truffles and chocolates are its exotic flavors and spices. Curry powder, candied violets and sweet guajillo chili pepper are some examples.

In a recent “What kind of truffle are you?” Twitter campaign, fans tweeted their five main personality traits and received responses with links to which truffle they are.  Find me anyone who wouldn’t want to be described as “zingy, crunchy, spicy, sassy, buttery sweet” Red Fire toffee.

I liked this idea so much I sent them mine. They told me that I am a caramel marshmallow.

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Another Piece of the Puzzle: Supporting Sales

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Beyond the consumers, small chocolate companies have another crucial audience to think about. This time it’s their retailers and wholesalers. Again, these are small companies whose owners and founders are oftentimes making the chocolate themselves. There isn’t a ton of extra cash available for mega sales teams.

Utah-based chocolate maker Amano has many hundreds of retailers. According to founder and owner Art Pollard, when Amano posts about a new product, not only does it get a sizable bump in online sales (which more than doubled for five days following its Facebook alert about the newly in-stock Montanya bar, for example), but the savviest of its retailers are also quick to respond with bulk orders. With a sales team of two, being able to get the word out instantaneously to even a fraction of its sellers both saves time and boosts sales. 

Vosges sees its wholesalers get involved on its Facebook Page. Furthermore, many people tweet their questions before calling customer service. Beyond using Twitter as a quick response customer service platform, Vosges also uses the platform to promote its retailers. The company keeps tabs on any tweets from people looking for its products and directs them to the nearest place to find its bacon chocolate bars, for example, even giving them a heads up about local sales and deals. Askinosie is also entering the local deals space on the location side, now exploring Facebook Places, with deals popping up as fans check in nearby.

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Make Your Own and Eat It Too: Merging Online With Offline

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As much as many of us wouldn’t mind popping into a local chocolate shop and making our very own signature sweets, this would likely result in a raging mess and personal escort right back out the door.  From teaching tons of chocolate sculpture, truffle-making and tasting workshops, I can personally attest that being surrounded by chocolate makes people crazy.

PlayFirst’s popular Facebook game Chocolatier Sweet Society, which launched this past June, recently took an interesting approach to helping its 390,000 monthly active users connect virtual (and less messy) chocolate making to the real-life experience of actually eating the chocolates they’ve “created.”

Players aim to become “world famous” chocolatiers of the Victorian era; they build their chocolate shop from the ground up, making decor and branding choices, choosing recipes, and making the chocolates. Players use virtual currency to purchase new recipes, source premium chocolate and exotic ingredients, and invest in other ways to bring more customers into their stores. 

Just before Thanksgiving, PlayFirst launched a special initiative with San Francisco-based chocolatier Charles Chocolates, a small batch, artisanal brand with a look and feel that matches the game’s Victorian aesthetic. Players can not only get recipes and make branded chocolates from a special collection that Charles Chocolates created just for the game, they can also buy the real-world versions of the chocolates, which are only available through the game and cannot be bought in any store, online or off. According to Eric Hartness, who leads the social team at PlayFirst, this is the first time that you can create a virtual good in a social game and then buy it in the real world.

PlayFirst saw installs rise 54% for the four days following the day of launch, and re-engagement of existing players increased by 16%. Players have since created more than 135 million pieces of Charles Chocolates for their virtual shops (the most popular being “toasted almond clusters,” of which 52 million were made).

Askinosie, right in line with tapping Facebook to engage online fans for real-world product purchases, has plans for a Facebook-based store. 

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Ask Around: Crowdsourcing Your Product

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Once the community is built out and thriving, there’s another opportunity that presents itself, though not all chocolate companies would dare to take it on. One innovative brand crowdsources its entire line. Tcho, based in San Francisco and led in part by CEO Louis Rossetto and President Jane Metcalfe (also known for co-founding Wired Magazine), was the first company to launch a chocolate line in beta. Marketing associate Larry Del Santo explained that the beta concept is the foundation of the company — appropriately, the store is called “beta store” and factory tours are called “beta tours.” 

It’s soon launching its first line of milk chocolate bars, expected to be out in 2011. To develop the bars, this past June, the company tapped its fans to beta test different recipes. The beta bars were available for purchase online, and anyone who was interested in participating could try them out and share their feedback through an online form.  About 90% of the participants were online and the rest did their trials in-store.

Though the company expected to run the beta through the summer, all the bars sold out within the month. Del Santo also explained that milk chocolate makes for a particularly fun beta. What do they test for? A few things: Much like wine grapes, cacao beans are grown in different places around the world in a variety of climates and soils, and therefore have different flavor profiles. Chocolate tasters can look for flavors and subtleties similarly to how they might taste wine.  But unlike their darker counterparts, the taste of milk bars goes beyond the straight bean blends, as the type of milk plays a major role. All that said, this past October, Tcho introduced a line of milk chocolate bars sold exclusively at Starbucks. This collection wasn’t offered out to the world in beta; its style and flavor was developed internally.

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Go On. Take a Bite.

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Some swear it’s an aphrodisiac, others stand by its supposed magical antioxidant powers, and still others buy it in bulk to remedy a bad mood. But overall, the vast majority of us have a deep, emotional connection to the cocoa beans that are hacked out of odd-looking pods to be dried, roasted, ground and blended with cocoa butter, sugar and vanilla (sometimes) until it all morphs into the velvety goodness with which we are all so enamored.

All artisanal food companies, both big and small, can learn from how these chocolate makers and chocolatiers are innovating and engaging with resources that are often quite limited.

What other interesting social media campaigns have permeated the foodie world? Share your thoughts in the comments.