My wife makes stuff. hair clips, t-shirts, quilts, soft toys, etc. She also loves shopping online, and spends hours and hours lots of time on Facebook.

But a funny thing happened the other day, we were sitting in the lounge room (she was on Facebook) and she suddenly cursed the air and said…

If I’d logged in [to Facebook] 5 mins ago I wouldn’t have missed that sale! Now all the fabric I want is gone.

My ears pricked up. I’ve been keeping an eye on the F-commerce, Facebook Commerce, Facebook shopping cart (etc.) developments over that last 12 months, not for any reason other than I think it’s potentially going to be huge!

The sad truth however is that I’d not seen a lot to really get me excited.  Sure there are ecommerce apps that you can add to your Fan pages (Payvment is awesome) and this is a huge step forward in terms of enabling purchases, but the whole shopping cart experience still feels destinctly ‘anti-social’. Do you know what I mean? A shopping cart is not inherently social (although you can ‘share’ purchases’), they’re transactional! Don’t get me wrong though I still think the e-commerce shopping cart apps on Facebook are great,  they just don’t excite me as much as I thought an integrated social ecommerce application would…

Anyway, back to my wife on the couch.

The Facebook page she had just opened was Bubbamia Fabrics (web site here too).  They sell fabrics for crafty types. Anyhow my wife was after some groovy fabrics for a toilet roll holder she was making (not really) and if she had logged in 5 minutes earlier she would have got the ‘Start Shopping’ post that signalled the start of the Bubbamia Sale Night! Confused? read below:

So what Bubbamia are doing here is sort of a flash sale / private sale / group buy all in one. Her fans (all 4,902 – respect!) love fabric, and they’re passionate enough to connect with her on Facebook for the chance to purchase. Bubbamia then upload a gallery of pictures (the products) and the sale is on. As soon as the sale is announced all the fans rush in to the album as fast as possible and type “SOLD” in the comments of the product they want. It’s unreal. It’s social Shopping!

What’s even more amazing is that there are game mechanics here too, it’s the competitive nature of being first, of getting your comment in before someone else when you know there’s minimal stock. genius.

And it’s viral by default! You comment, your friends see you comment.  You (win) and  buy the item, your friends see the item you purchased.

Genius.

Payments are then worked out via email.  everyone’s happy,

And the best thing about this genius idea, is that it’s organic. It feels right, like a natural extension of a fan page on Facebook rather than an app that’s been bolted on.

So I dug in a little deeper, and a whole new world opened up to me, there are heaps of these ‘pages’ on FB and they all help each other out. It’s like an F-Commerce Fan Page Network. And while not all I found run the ‘Sale events’ as described above (many still transact via their web site) they are all driving massive engagement within their niche markets, and making sales.

Here are a few more I found:

• Vintage Marketplace
• Charlie&Jax
• Giggle Berry Creations
• Lil Dilberry Bags
• Little Snuggle Monkey

Droolr.com – the latest site from Stateless Systems – has launched!

I may be slightly biased*, but the inner Geek in me just loves this!

The idea is simple. Users find something cool online and then share it with the Droolr community.

Once listed, the users of Droolr then vote for Gadgets that they like via a  Want? voting button.

Other nifty features:

• Sign in via twitter of facebook accounts.
• Create wishlists of gadgets you love.
• Follow other Droolr’s so you can be notified about the stuff they WANT.
• Earn ‘Karma Points’ when other users ‘Want’ items that you’ve added – be the ‘Top Karma’ dude! …so far I have low karma…

You can add comments as well as recommend other sites to find particular gadgets shared by other peeps.

There are a few screen shots below. But do be sure to go check it out!

*Full disclosure: I work at Stateless Systems