Big companies’ Facebook pages are getting more sophisticated all the time.
At first they were simple placeholders to remind Facebook users that a brand was hip to social networking. Then, as social media caught on, they became interactive collaborations between companies and consumers. Soon, the first fully functional storefronts appeared, allowing users to buy flowers and shoes with real, not virtual currency.
Now Delta has upped the ante. Starting today, you can buy airplane tickets on Facebook.
Delta’s Ticket Window application lets users browse flights and buy tickets all from within the comfy confines of the carrier’s Facebook page. Once a ticket is bought, users can share their itinerary with select Facebook friends — for example, those who live in the destination city.
“Our customers are spending more time online and are looking for new ways to connect with us,” said Bob Kupbens, Delta’s Vice President of eCommerce. “We’re now bringing Delta to our customers rather than the other way around.”
The Ticket Window app was developed by Alvenda, the same company that built the first fully functional storefronts on Facebook. “Future releases will further leverage the social graph so you can do things like coordinate group travel more easily,” Alvenda founder Wade Gerten said in a blog post.
So far, you can’t use Facebook Credits to book a flight. Just as well. With a Credit equaling 10 cents, it would take about 5,000 credits to buy a round-trip flight across the US. Now that’s a lot of virtual currency.
