Flower shop launches first Facebook store

August 2, 2009 at 12:00a.m.

NEW YORK — In a first, but likely not last, for Facebook, a retailer is setting up shop inside the popular social-networking site.

Flower and gift retailer 1-800-Flowers.com is announcing it has opened a retail store to let people shop for its products directly through Facebook.

The Carle Place, N.Y.-based company was already a pioneer in using a 1-800 number as its name. The company went online in 1991 and three years later it became the first merchant on AOL.

Now that it gets the majority of its orders online, CEO and founder Jim McCann calls mobile applications and the Facebook store a natural step. The company launched an application for the BlackBerry last fall, and one for the iPhone followed shortly.

Of course, there are still hurdles. It’s hard to find the company’s fan page on Facebook, for example, unless you remember to include the hyphens and the “.com.” This is something 1-800-Flowers.com says it is aware of. But to fix it, Facebook would have to tweak its search capabilities.

It’s difficult to put a dollar figure on Facebook’s benefits to businesses such as 1-800-Flowers.com. But what is clear is that more and more companies are keeping up with their customers using social networks. There are roughly 300,000 active fan pages on Facebook, for businesses ranging from Target to McDonald’s.

AOL to switch from AOL LLC to AOL Inc. with spinoff

SAN FRANCISCO — AOL will once again get a new name.

The struggling Internet company, which changed its moniker from America Online Inc. to AOL LLC just three years ago, will become known as AOL Inc. before it begins trading as a public company — something expected near the end of the year when it is spun off from parent Time Warner Inc.

AOL must make the change from LLC to Inc. before it can be listed on a stock exchange, but it’s not yet clear if it will happen before or after it is spun off.

According to a recent regulatory filing, New York-based AOL plans to list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “AOL.”

AOL has changed names several times thus far. The company started out in 1985 as Quantum Computer Services. It began offering its AOL online service in 1989 and became known as America Online Inc. in 1991.

When the company merged with Time Warner Inc. in 2001 it formed AOL Time Warner Inc., but Time Warner cut the AOL from its name as AOL’s legacy dial-up Internet business — once immensely popular — began its decline.

In 2006, America Online Inc. became AOL in a branding decision and switched from being a corporation to a limited liability company because of Google Inc.’s $1 billion purchase of a 5-percent stake in the company.

AOL said recently in a regulatory filing that Time Warner bought back that stake in July for $283 million, setting the stage for the upcoming spinoff.

Meanwhile, AOL is beginning to embrace the brand again after worrying that people have viewed it as primarily a dial-up Internet access company even as it increasingly emphasized its advertising and Web site properties.

Starting Sept. 1, its Platform-A advertising unit will become known as AOL Advertising. In some circles, the company also will start referring to the Web properties in its MediaGlow unit, along with some other products and services such as MapQuest and AIM instant messaging, as AOL Media.

Associated Press