Can Facebook sell print subscriptions?

A system is being marketed now that would allow Facebook users to buy print magazine subscriptions without leaving the Facebook site or even its newsfeed. Alvenda, a company that builds e-commerce applications, is collaborating wtih Synapse, a division of Time Inc. that sells may of that company's magazines, according to a story from Crain's New York Business.

If you share a magazine article link with your Facebook friends, for example, their news feeds will allow them to expand the item into a full article with ads and an option to subscribe, said Wade Gerten, chief executive at Alvenda, which has developed e-commerce Facebook apps for companies including Hallmark and 1-800-Flowers. "It all happens within Facebook," Mr. Gerten said.

"Consumers don't want to leave where they are on the web, wherever they are," said Alix Hart, vice president for online marketing at Synapse. "Facebook is a place where we think that over the coming year there are going to be more and more opportunities to present magazine offers in a really relevant way to consumers, as they're starting to share magazine content in a much deeper way than ever before."

This all must raise the question of whether the pursuit of subscribers is so voracious that, as a friend says, it means we are marketing subs to people who find e-mail too text-heavy! While Facebook has 450 million users, it's not clear whether selling subs over the internet is all it's cracked up to be. For instance, says the story, Maghound, another Time Inc. initiative that allows readers to mix and match and swap in and out of subscriptions, hasn't generated expected sales after being in the field for 18 months.