I came across this great article in Bloomberg BusinessWeek yesterday which talks to social commerce - a trend that has been exciting me in recent months. The article points out that Facebook has been ramping up its e-commerce functionality making it possible for users to purchase anything from plane tickets (Delta) through to flowers (1800-Flowers). The benefit for Facebook is obvious - the longer the consumer stays in the Facebook environment, the more advertising they can see.

Some social commerce platforms that already exists which allow secure purchasing without ever leaving Facebook include:

• Payvment - a free (for now) tool that is being beta tested. You can check out an existing storefront here
• Magnett - this one is run locally (in Australia) and is a great social commerce solution for businesses with larger inventory that require more backend functionality
• Alvenda - for the big guns! Alvenda requires a relatively hefty subscription fee and is currently being embraced by some of the bigger retailers in the US.