Facebook推出电商APP，可直播带货
周二，Facebook的首席执行官马克·扎克伯格在直播中推出了这款新软件。他认为这个平台能够有效地帮助正在疫情期间挣扎着的各类商家。“我们的目标是帮助他们提升顾客黏度，无论是小微店家还是全球品牌，都可以通过我们的APP和他们的客户紧密联系起来。”
Facebook Shops能够更好地让该公司旗下的其他三个APP互联互通，因为平台用户在购物过程中必然也会用到Instagram的照片分享功能以及WhatsApp和Messenger的信息传递功能。
2012年，Facebook花10亿美元收购了Instagram。2014年，该公司又斥190亿美元巨资收购了WhatsApp。事实证明，Facebook的投资没错，这两次收购都为其带来了巨额利润，而这一次Facebook Shops的出场，也正是该公司试图从Instagram和WhatsApp上继续谋求回报的途径之一。扎克伯格表示，虽然Facebook Shops本身是免费的，但大量的商业流量却可以再次拉升公司的广告收入，而广告费一直都是Facebook主要的财政收入来源。
扎克伯格认为，这个新产品将会是整个“Facebook Apps互联生态圈”的关键因素。一直以来，许多企业都会利用Facebook或者是Instagram这两个平台来向消费者安利自己的品牌。可以说，Facebook早就跃跃欲试地想要通过建立自己的交易平台来构建一整个具有商业价值的环形结构了。
功能与作用
任何一个企业都能在Facebook shops上申请开设一个Facebook和Instagram的通用账号，然后就可以上传自己的商品目录供顾客线上挑选。Facebook商店接受两种付款方式：一种是在Facebook页面处理付款，另一种是将客户重新定向到另一个企业的独立网站进行付款。
另外，消费者可以自行选用WhatsApp、Instagram Direct或者 Messenger中的任意一个来联系商家。据官方规划，在不久的将来，顾客甚至可以直接通过发送信息来完成整个购买流程。与此同时，Instagram的新版本也在“探索区Explore feature”同步上线了Instagram Shop的微程序，用户可以直接在Instagram上浏览不同的品牌商品，并完成购买。
还有一大亮点就是Facebook和Instagram的直播功能与商品推销的联动，商家可以在直播的时候直接放上商品的购买链接来提升“带货”效率。事实上，这种模式正是电视导购经由互联网改造后形成的全新变体。
最后还值得一提的是，Facebook公司声称正在为企业研发一个用户黏度查询系统，日后，企业可以通过自己的账号看到不同的用户在本店所对应的消费频次，从而更好地管理并应用这些数据。
Facebook目前已经与包括Shopify、BigCommerce、Woo在内的多个电商平台达成了合作意向，接下来这些战略伙伴也会为Facebook Shops提供更多的开发服务和技术工具。
AI技术战略
在周二发布的另一份声明和博文中，Facebook公司对于未来购物领域的AI市场做出了无限的展望。公司的AI总监马诺哈尔·帕鲁里表示，如今一些巨头零售商已经能在线给顾客提供360度的全景产品视图和详细的目录信息，而Facebook Shops的目标则在于为那些弱势的小企业提供技术支持，让它们也可以做到这一点。
在Facebook正在研发的众多项目中，有一个特别的计算机视觉系统。无论是Gap的T恤衫，还是宜家（IKEA）的沙发，又或者是起亚（KIA）的小跑车，都能被它一键识别。
这个系统叫做 GrokNet。它不仅能识别商品，还可以识别商品的参数，告诉用户商品的颜色和风格等等。有了这个系统，当用户希望购买一件同款产品时，只需对着看到的东西拍一张照。同时，商家也可以通过拍照对他们的商品进行录入，极大地减轻了工作负担。为了保证识别精度，GrokNet系统的7个数据库接受了大量调试，它需要在数十亿张清晰度不同的照片里将每一个物件归类到83个不同的属性当中去。
“经过微调后，这个系统现在特别适用于识别时装、家具和汽车产品。”Facebook计算机视觉项目研究员兼GrokNet开发者肖恩·贝尔说道。最初，GrokNet系统其实是旧金山一家名为GrokStyle的公司的子产品。2016年2月Facebook收购了这家公司，但没有披露具体的收购金额。
在此基础上，Facebook表示公司还创建了一个可以识别被部分遮挡的物体的系统，例如夹克衫里的T恤。不过这个系统也并非完美无缺，它还是未能做到精确地计算外套里面的T恤的袖子长度。“但在这项艰巨的任务中，它的表现比其他任何系统都要好。”公司的另一位计算机视觉项目研究员塔玛拉·伯格说道。
在智能算法方面，一个名为“旋转视图”（Rotating View）的工具被新近研发成功，只需几张照片，一幅完整的三维全景视图就展现了出来。同样，这个软件是由Facebook的研究人员与芯片制造商英伟达（Nvidia）和DeepMind人工智能公司（谷歌母公司Alphabet旗下）共同合作开发的。
Facebook的博文向我们勾勒了一个奇幻美妙的未来。或许有一天，当我们踏进商店时，虚拟导购会和我们心灵相通，我们喜欢的服装款式、我们着迷的建筑风格都能自然而然地浮现在我们的面前。
伯格表示，Facebook正在沿着这些路线打造出一个“虚拟时尚造型师”，这个造型师能够帮助用户参谋造型，为他们衣柜里的搭配提供建议。她说，一直以来她都希望自己能拥有一个和1995年的老电影《独领风骚》（Clueless）里的“雪儿”一样的造型师。（财富中文网）
编译：陈怡轩
为加速社交网络与商业的融合，Facebook推出了一个全新的电子购物平台Facebook Shops。
周二，Facebook的首席执行官马克·扎克伯格在直播中推出了这款新软件。他认为这个平台能够有效地帮助正在疫情期间挣扎着的各类商家。“我们的目标是帮助他们提升顾客黏度，无论是小微店家还是全球品牌，都可以通过我们的APP和他们的客户紧密联系起来。”
Facebook Shops能够更好地让该公司旗下的其他三个APP互联互通，因为平台用户在购物过程中必然也会用到Instagram的照片分享功能以及WhatsApp和Messenger的信息传递功能。
2012年，Facebook花10亿美元收购了Instagram。2014年，该公司又斥190亿美元巨资收购了WhatsApp。事实证明，Facebook的投资没错，这两次收购都为其带来了巨额利润，而这一次Facebook Shops的出场，也正是该公司试图从Instagram和WhatsApp上继续谋求回报的途径之一。扎克伯格表示，虽然Facebook Shops本身是免费的，但大量的商业流量却可以再次拉升公司的广告收入，而广告费一直都是Facebook主要的财政收入来源。
扎克伯格认为，这个新产品将会是整个“Facebook Apps互联生态圈”的关键因素。一直以来，许多企业都会利用Facebook或者是Instagram这两个平台来向消费者安利自己的品牌。可以说，Facebook早就跃跃欲试地想要通过建立自己的交易平台来构建一整个具有商业价值的环形结构了。
功能与作用
任何一个企业都能在Facebook shops上申请开设一个Facebook和Instagram的通用账号，然后就可以上传自己的商品目录供顾客线上挑选。Facebook商店接受两种付款方式：一种是在Facebook页面处理付款，另一种是将客户重新定向到另一个企业的独立网站进行付款。
另外，消费者可以自行选用WhatsApp、Instagram Direct或者 Messenger中的任意一个来联系商家。据官方规划，在不久的将来，顾客甚至可以直接通过发送信息来完成整个购买流程。与此同时，Instagram的新版本也在“探索区Explore feature”同步上线了Instagram Shop的微程序，用户可以直接在Instagram上浏览不同的品牌商品，并完成购买。
还有一大亮点就是Facebook和Instagram的直播功能与商品推销的联动，商家可以在直播的时候直接放上商品的购买链接来提升“带货”效率。事实上，这种模式正是电视导购经由互联网改造后形成的全新变体。
最后还值得一提的是，Facebook公司声称正在为企业研发一个用户黏度查询系统，日后，企业可以通过自己的账号看到不同的用户在本店所对应的消费频次，从而更好地管理并应用这些数据。
Facebook目前已经与包括Shopify、BigCommerce、Woo在内的多个电商平台达成了合作意向，接下来这些战略伙伴也会为Facebook Shops提供更多的开发服务和技术工具。
AI技术战略
在周二发布的另一份声明和博文中，Facebook公司对于未来购物领域的AI市场做出了无限的展望。公司的AI总监马诺哈尔·帕鲁里表示，如今一些巨头零售商已经能在线给顾客提供360度的全景产品视图和详细的目录信息，而Facebook Shops的目标则在于为那些弱势的小企业提供技术支持，让它们也可以做到这一点。
在Facebook正在研发的众多项目中，有一个特别的计算机视觉系统。无论是Gap的T恤衫，还是宜家（IKEA）的沙发，又或者是起亚（KIA）的小跑车，都能被它一键识别。
这个系统叫做 GrokNet。它不仅能识别商品，还可以识别商品的参数，告诉用户商品的颜色和风格等等。有了这个系统，当用户希望购买一件同款产品时，只需对着看到的东西拍一张照。同时，商家也可以通过拍照对他们的商品进行录入，极大地减轻了工作负担。为了保证识别精度，GrokNet系统的7个数据库接受了大量调试，它需要在数十亿张清晰度不同的照片里将每一个物件归类到83个不同的属性当中去。
The system was fine-tuned to perform particularly well for fashion items, furniture, and automobiles, Sean Bell, the computer vision researcher who developed the software, said. Bell had previously founded a San Francisco company called GrokStyle that was creating this software and which Facebook acquired in February 2019 for an undisclosed amount. “经过微调后，这个系统现在特别适用于识别时装、家具和汽车产品。”Facebook计算机视觉项目研究员兼GrokNet开发者肖恩·贝尔说道。最初，GrokNet系统其实是旧金山一家名为GrokStyle的公司的子产品。2016年2月Facebook收购了这家公司，但没有披露具体的收购金额。
在此基础上，Facebook表示公司还创建了一个可以识别被部分遮挡的物体的系统，例如夹克衫里的T恤。不过这个系统也并非完美无缺，它还是未能做到精确地计算外套里面的T恤的袖子长度。“但在这项艰巨的任务中，它的表现比其他任何系统都要好。”公司的另一位计算机视觉项目研究员塔玛拉·伯格说道。
在智能算法方面，一个名为“旋转视图”（Rotating View）的工具被新近研发成功，只需几张照片，一幅完整的三维全景视图就展现了出来。同样，这个软件是由Facebook的研究人员与芯片制造商英伟达（Nvidia）和DeepMind人工智能公司（谷歌母公司Alphabet旗下）共同合作开发的。
Facebook的博文向我们勾勒了一个奇幻美妙的未来。或许有一天，当我们踏进商店时，虚拟导购会和我们心灵相通，我们喜欢的服装款式、我们着迷的建筑风格都能自然而然地浮现在我们的面前。
伯格表示，Facebook正在沿着这些路线打造出一个“虚拟时尚造型师”，这个造型师能够帮助用户参谋造型，为他们衣柜里的搭配提供建议。她说，一直以来她都希望自己能拥有一个和1995年的老电影《独领风骚》（Clueless）里的“雪儿”一样的造型师。（财富中文网）
编译：陈怡轩
Facebook has unveiled a new e-commerce platform and several new shopping features in an effort to make its social network more relevant for business.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the changes Tuesday in a live video broadcast on the social network in which he positioned the new shopping service as a way to boost small businesses, especially those struggling during the coronavirus pandemic.
“Our goal is to make shopping seamless and empower anyone from a small-business owner to a global brand to use our apps to connect with customers,” Zuckerberg said.
The new e-commerce platform, called Facebook Shops, is a further step in Facebook’s efforts to integrate its original social networking site with photo-sharing site Instagram and messaging services WhatsApp and Messenger, which it also owns.
It’s also the company’s latest move to generate revenue from Instagram, which it purchased for $1 billion in 2012, and WhatsApp, which it bought for $19 billion in 2014. Although the shops are free for businesses to set up, Zuckerberg said he thought the improved commerce offerings would lead to increased advertising across Facebook’s platforms, which is the company’s primary revenue source.
He said the new shopping features were “the biggest step we’ve taken yet to enable commerce across our apps.” While in the past, many companies had used Facebook and Instagram to build brand awareness, Facebook has been eager to ensure users stay within its ecosystem to actually make transactions.
Facebook Shops will allow any business to set up a unified Facebook and Instagram virtual storefront, put its catalog online, and take orders through either a link to its own website or, for companies in the U.S. that use Facebook’s “checkout” feature, directly on Facebook’s platform.
Customers will be able to communicate with the retailer through WhatsApp, Instagram Direct, or Messenger. In the future, Facebook said, customers would be able to make purchases directly through these messaging services too.
The company also debuted new e-commerce features for Instagram. One called Instagram Shop will enable users to browse for items they may want to buy through the app’s Explore feature, browsing by brand or item type, and then make purchases directly within the app.
Another feature will allow businesses to tag products in their Facebook Shops catalog and then do a broadcast on Facebook Live or Instagram Live that will enable customers to purchase those items while watching. In essence, it takes a concept pioneered in the television era by the Home Shopping Network and updates it for the mobile age.
Finally, the company said it would test a way for customers to connect company loyalty programs to their Facebook profiles and then enable businesses to manage those loyalty programs through their Facebook Shops accounts.
Facebook said companies that provide tech to help businesses sell online such as Shopify, BigCommerce, Woo, ChannelAdvisor, Cred Commerce, Cafe24, Tienda Nube, and Feedonomics were partnering with it on these new shopping features and would be providing tools to help small businesses set up on Facebook Shops.
In a separate announcement and blog post Tuesday, Facebook touted several artificial intelligence advances that it says will underpin the new shopping features. Manohar Paluri, a director of Facebook AI, said the vision is to give small businesses tools to create the same sort of online shopping experiences—complete with 360-degree views of products and detailed catalog information—that previously only major retail brands could afford to deliver.
Among these innovations is a computer vision system capable of recognizing almost any product—from a Gap sweatshirt to an IKEA sofa to a KIA Sportage—in almost any image.
The system, which Facebook calls GrokNet, not only identifies the product, it can determine many of its attributes, such as its color and style. The idea is that someone will be able to upload a photograph to Facebook’s Marketplace, or eventually Instagram, and automatically create links to places where you can buy the items in that photograph. Businesses will be able to create catalogs of items they can sell more rapidly simply by photographing their products. And, eventually, Facebook and Instagram users may be able to shop simply by taking photographs of items they are hoping to buy.
The system was fine-tuned to perform particularly well for fashion items, furniture, and automobiles, Sean Bell, the computer vision researcher who developed the software, said. Bell had previously founded a San Francisco company called GrokStyle that was creating this software and which Facebook acquired in February 2019 for an undisclosed amount.
The system was trained on billions of images, both high-resolution and low-resolution, across seven different data sets, and it outputs 83 different classifications for each object.
In what it calls a world first, Facebook also said it had created a system that can accurately identify partly blocked objects in images—such as a T-shirt underneath a jacket. The system isn’t always perfect—it can’t know for certain in some cases, for instance, the sleeve length of a shirt underneath a sweater. But it performs better than any prior system at this difficult task, Tamara Berg, another Facebook researcher who worked on the computer vision project, said.
The company also created a different A.I. algorithm, called Rotating View, that will enable anyone to create three-dimensional and panoramic views from just a few photographs. The software leverages advances made in the past two years by Facebook’s own researchers and those at companies like chipmaker Nvidia and DeepMind, the A.I. company owned by Google parent Alphabet, that can render three-dimensional models from two-dimensional images.
In blog posts related to the A.I. developments, Facebook sketched a future in which an intelligent virtual assistant helps users shop, suggesting items that suit their personal tastes and fashion sense, or that fit in well in with their existing home decor.
Berg said the company is in the process of prototyping a kind of “virtual fashion stylist” along these lines—one that would eventually be able to recommend what items in a person’s wardrobe would work well together or help a person build outfits from different items. She said it has long been her own ambition to create a virtual fashion assistant modeled on the character of Cher, played by Alicia Silverstone in the 1995 film Clueless.
