Israeli Startup To Lead The Way For Affiliate Marketing On Facebook

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL, January 19, 2011 (Press-News.org) For many months there has been a lot of speculation regarding the future of Facebook storefronts. Reports have shown a mixed and varied opinion on the future success of such storefronts. Additionally, out of nowhere, the growth of Facebook development companies offering storefront applications has risen dramatically. But now as the social e-commerce scene is hotting up with both development companies and those wishing to invest in this arena, Israeli startup Zibaba is leaping ahead of its competitors by offering their storefront customers a social affiliate program within Facebook.

“We believe that having an affiliate program as an additional marketing tool, will give our merchant customers the additional boost needed to promote their brands and sell their merchandise on Facebook,” stated Ronen Shlomo, CEO of Zibaba (www.zibaba.com). “The online affiliate marketing space is continually growing. As more people are becoming aware of the benefits of working from home and promoting other people’s products, affiliate marketers are always looking for the best way to get online sales.”

But who is the social affiliate program aimed at? Shlomo continued “That’s the best part. Anyone can become an affiliate at any level. Affiliates currently promoting products and services using Facebook ads currently redirect potential customers outside of the Facebook environment to external online stores. This has great potential to create a ‘loss of interest’ on the part of the customer. Redirecting a customer to a storefront hosted within the Facebook environment maintains the customer’s interest and increases the chance of a sale. Additionally, anyone with friends on Facebook can select merchandise from any of the storefronts and share advice, opinions and ‘likes’ with their friends. This is the viral and social aspect of our technology and also enables anyone to become an affiliate and earn money from such referrals.”

Affiliates have two options of promoting merchandise. The first is just to setup an affiliate account and promote individual stores and merchants, linking directly back to the merchant’s Facebook store. The second way is to create their own branded storefront and stock it with their choice of merchandise from a number of Facebook storefronts. “This brings about great opportunity in the partnerships of merchants and affiliates,” commented Michael Katz, VP Business Development and Investor Relations. “With all the differences in opinion whether stores on Facebook will be successful or not, we should all just look at the facts. Facebook currently has the potential to be the biggest shopping mall in the world. A shopping mall that is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In the early days of the Internet it took a certain amount of courage to put credit card information into websites. Not only are we beyond that period, we are now looking at huge brand names opening storefronts on Facebook. Brands that already have two crucial elements. The first is the trust of an established name and the second is the social following within Facebook Fan pages. Brands on Facebook which have in excess of a quarter of a million fans have the unique opportunity to offer their fans a shopping arena in the midst of their favorite social media site, Facebook. Keeping inline with the social environment we have also developed the technology which allows fan promotions and discounts plus the ability to receive huge savings based on ‘group buying’.” Katz added.

But how does group buying work? Arie Fishler, CTO explained, “Merchants can setup items that are priced for individual sale and for group sale. A social network such as Facebook is the perfect environment for this technology. A person sees a product but would like to pay the group price in place of the regular price, they can share with their Facebook friends and reach the quantity that triggers the ‘group’ sale.”

Founded in 2008 by Ronen Shlomo (CEO) and Arie Fishler (CTO) to offer marketing solutions that tap into the potential of social engagement, Zibaba has made ground breaking developments in the world of social media marketing. Beginning with customized, branded applications for businesses wishing to utilize the engagement and interaction tools of social media marketing, Zibaba is now at the forefront of e-commerce for Facebook. Providing retailers with a solution to run and manage online stores with full payment functionality, all within the Facebook social media environment. Zibaba is a Facebook �preferred developer� company.

For more information, please contact Michael Katz � michael@zibaba.com.