Will social media change e-commerce?

My career started in interface design for medical training applications. From there I ended up moving to general librarian-centric interfaces, and that segued into e-commerce. My e-commerce exposure was very robust, not just consumer-oriented e-commerce but real meaty b-to-b stuff. Back end merchant interfaces designed for handling everything from inventory to level-three credit card data. The e-commerce experience ended shortly after 9/11 as I and most of the dot-commers in the U.S. found ourselves suddenly jobless and scrambling for anything.

After another stint in medical applications that allowed doctors to prescribe vetted and board-certified medical articles regarding conditions, tests, and treatments for patients suffering medical issues in a diverse range of medical disciplines, I found myself in a very unique job working on social media. And when I say social media I mean Message Boards, Blogs, Chat, and User Profiles. One of the most interesting parts about these products to me was designing the provisioning interface.

I should quickly define provisioning as functionality extended to permissioned users that allows them to say who can see what information within a given venue. On Facebook, this is how you can upload a photo album but only let it be seen by your friends, or a group of friends, or just one friend, or even just yourself.

Within user profiles, we allowed the end-user to establish this sort of provisioning for components on their profile (such as their contact information). We spent a lot of time thinking about this provisioning, and it wasn't until I began my current job hunt that I started applying the principles of what we discovered to e-commerce.

When I worked on b-to-b software, we learned that in general everyone wants everyone to see all of their products. This is logical. However a product is only a small part of a catalog, and what we found merchants and distributors asking for was the ability to establish custom catalogs for different customers. A product could be public, meaning it could be provisioned for anyone with access to the Internet, but pricing and delivery information should be more selective. Further more, you might want to show special prices and delivery options to a group of or individual preferred customers.

I remember the first time a MySpace user could make friends with a can of Coke (which also had a profile). While MySpace is a consumer-based social media venue, I see this as an inspiration for a more complex, and compelling business case. What if EVERYONE and EVERYTHING in the commercial food chain were associated via a social network, from the Product Designer, to the Manufacturer, to the Marketer, to the Primary Distributor, to the Secondary Distributor, to the Wholesaler, to the Retailer, ultimately all the way to the Consumer (whether that Consumer is a business or an individual is a hair I won't split here) and even to the Product itself? Wouldn't that be simply amazing?

Transparency and availability could be as granular and intricate, or as open and simple as desired. Direct-from-manufacturer specials could be offered from a company that also has a tentacular labyrinth of distribution channels. Everything from order fulfillment to buying trends to buyer affinity to targeted advertising could be managed in an elegant and modular environment.

I see a world of potential in this model and I have had some astounding conversations on this topic with some powerful social media and e-commerce thinkers. It is something I imagine will be commonplace in ten years but from where we are now seems light years away.

I hope I get to participate in the construction of such an environment--the UI/UX opportunities it presents are unbelievable.

What do you think? Will social media revolutionize e-commerce? Will brick-and-mortar stores last in the new economy? Where is it all going? Sound off!