Facebook: Buying Stock In 3 Clicks - Business Insider

Facebook's impending initial public offering on NASDAQ isn't the only way that people will be able to trade in stock of the social networking site.

By June of this year, public companies will be able to sell their stock to customers directly from their Facebook pages with no fees, no brokers, and in as little as $10 increments, San Francisco-based company Loyal3 announced at Ad Age's Digital Conference Wednesday.

"This is the next evolution of the 'like' button in a lot of ways," Loyal3 director and former Facebook chief privacy officer Chris Kelly said

There's a significant untapped consumer base for stock, according to Loyal3, only 18 percent of American families are stock owners. "Ownership changes everything,"?CEO Barry Schneider said. "People care more about things they own than things they don't." He then echoed Lawrence Summer's mantra that "in the history of the world, no one has ever washed a rented car."

Schneider sees his customer stock ownership plan (CSOP) as an extension of the "Occupy Wall Street" movement.

"Occupy Wall Street exemplifies the disenfranchisement your consumers feel," he said. Now they can "occupy Main Street." To hammer home the "for-the-people" point, there will be a $2,500 a month cap to deter day traders.

The platform will allow partial ownership in as little as three clicks. "We've set out to modernize a system to make it cost effective for brands and made it easy for consumers as buying a book on Amazon."

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