Social Storefront

In his book, “Socialnomics”, Erik Qualman brings up a very intriguing concept that I would term the “Social Storefront”. This would be Facebook, LinkedIn or some other social platform providing a business on their business profile page to sell product.
Facebook is rapidly becoming the mini-web and this component would only quicken that process. By adding the ability for a small business to set up shop online on Facebook for a small piece of profits (as Qualman suggests, .005%) then any company could take on the opportunity to compete with larger corporations without having to spend thousands of dollars on an e-commerce solution.
They would get to market faster, cheaper, and easier. Just as they can establish an online presence with fan pages and business profiles they would be able to sell product online in a simple manner as well. Many companies in a brick and mortar situation that are struggling would be able to extend their reach.
This could then get really detailed if there was the offering, but not required, ability to customize similar to FBML and other custom platform markups.
Google could really get into this as well with the Youtube platform by allowing a company to post a video of a product and then have the ability to purchase it right from the video. Youtube could offer this at a vastly reduced overhead and make a lot of money through this. Twitter likewise could use microblogging to do the same thing right from their platforms. This could be extremely valuable of taken to the mobile platform as well. It goes beyond comparable shopping, but I could be in the store and search Facebook and find a vendor I follow on FB has it for 20% less and then I could buy oit from there.