Ondango Gets $500,000 In Funding

Sites include Facebook.com , ondango.com . Published on September 21st, 2012. Written by Anthony West.

Facebook commerce is something that is yet to mature on the world’s largest social network, but this hasn’t stopped third-party companies from leveraging Facebook’s massive user base for ecommerce gain.

One such company is Ondango, a Berlin-based company that specializes in turning Facebook likes into actual commercial transactions. Since launch 11 months ago, the platform has grown in popularity among what are called ‘social commerce customers’ and investors. In addition to the $200,000 raised earlier in the year, the company has managed to raise another $500,000 in venture capital. The money was chipped in by London-based VC Connect Ventures.

The majority of the new funding will go towards expanding the platform and broadening the reach to users in the US. Presently Ondango is heavily used by German Facebook users (around 60% of the overall total) but the ultimate ambition is to push further in Europe and then cross the Atlantic.

Ondango is well poised to capitalize on the growing social ecommerce phenomenon. One estimate puts the size of ecommerce that runs through Facebook in the UK at $3.2 billion. And that’s considering that a majority of these transactions would have been layered on top of Facebook through third-party applications. Once the social networking giant rolls out its own full-scale ecommerce offerings, this number will no doubt grow.

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