Social Commerce

Cartfly, Buzzing Across the Net….

2009-12-16T12:10:00.000-08:00

Cartfly is an e-commerce tool used in social networks.

As its name indicates, it is essentially a “shopping cart”, a usable and installable basket embedded into e-commerce sites. Contrary to other tools, Cartfly presents itself as a widget that can be installed very easily.

PC World writes:

Here the key word is not only “easily” but also “share”.

Cartfly can be installed on the whole constellation of Web 2.0. applications.

These include the profile pages of Facebook, MySpace, Hi5, Blogger, TypePad, WordPress, Friendster….

Cartfly is fully engaged in the development of social commerce in opening up new monetization possibilities for the Web 2.0 . PageMage, Nimbit, and Payvment storefronts are also some of these new social commerce tools.

They all bet on a rapid growth in their points of sale. This is where social networks come into play.

Cartfly counts on its widget becoming widespread and buzz on the net.

It also is betting on its business model, free download and installation, and a commission starting from 3% on all sales, in order to soon become a “must have” tool, and additionally, in its original and übersimple format are boutiques created with this widget. Cartfly assures that there already exist thousands ….

Definitions of Social Commerce: From Customers to Friends…?

2009-12-05T09:09:00.000-08:00

Like many industries starting off, social commerce lacks a clear definition. There are many different terms that exist used to define this concept as Paul Marsden illustrates in his blog SocialCommerceToday.

Between 2005 and 2007 he collected 17 definitions and had the excellent idea of copying them all down in Wordle in order to see the many terms linked to this industry. Here is the result:

In doing this, Paul Marsden was able to come up with his own definition (18):
“Social commerce: A subset of electronic commerce that employs collaborative social media tools to assist in online purchasing and selling”.

Definitions definitely vary depending on whether one is a retailer or a “shopper”; or whether or not the application point is an individual consumer or a friend in a social network.

By mapping these points of view on symmetrical axes we get a graph of 18 terms, now 19 including the one that I propose for SherPad, which emphasizes the word of mouth strategy, conversations between friends, and social networks.

(19)“Social Commerce rises through trusted advice in conversations and word-of-mouth among your friends and relations in social networks, blogs, and communities, helping to make shopping decisions and transactions”.

For each definition, the four most relevant key words were kept. There is a certain tendency to see the most recent definitions show at the top, combine the issue of social networks, links between friends, and favor the “shopper’s” point of view.

However, this is not irreversible, as the definitions of IBM and Paul Marsden, which are situated in the lower part, state:

IBM: “Social commerce: Connect and foster active participation with customers to help improve your customer experience…including ratings and reviews, blogs and micro-blogging, as well as forums and communities”.

There is a difference, or maybe even an opposition, between the definition given by Bazaarvoice, the societal leader in consumer review, and the one of Paul Dunay.

Bazaarvoice:
“Social commerce: Strategy of connecting customers to customers online and leveraging those connections for commercial purpose”.

Paul Dunay:
“Social commerce: Working with or using your social graph, which is defined as your followers or your friends, and allowing them to help you make buying decisions”.

Will social commerce continue to develop along these two different points of view or will they merge together?

Hey Brand Marketers, Do You Have a Good Gaming Strategy?

2009-12-01T11:20:00.000-08:00

Should marketers have a strategy for the social gaming market?

This is the logical question that ensues from the mania of game applications that have taken over Facebook, as well as from the explosion of the virtual goods market that from now on are also accessible on iPhone and Twitter.

Facebook application ratings

Two numbers exemplify this phenomenon:

The first three Facebook application creators, Zynga, Playfish, and Rock You, total 285 million active users each month.
The virtual goods market in the USA hits 1.2 million dollars this year.

With the iPhone, publishers will, from now on, be able to sell virtual goods using free applications. Considering that virtual goods were not able to be advertised on iPhone before the OS 3 and then, only with purchased applications, this is a huge evolution that is taking place in the gaming and phone application market.

This market is going to continue to grow from not only application sales (at very modest prices) and advertising, but also with the sales of virtual goods in free applications.

This shows that during the next three years, there is enormous potential for growth in the virtual goods market.

As for Facebook, the huge success of social game creators has completely changed the video game market.

For example, Electronic Arts, the leader of this market, though having difficulty with its traditional segments, just bought Playfish for 400 million dollars, including Earn outs.

Now, the Social games of Zynga, Playfish, etc…. have become succesful in demand advertising platforms called advergaming and also sell virtual goods.

Thus it is necessary that the marketing strategies of brands on social networks take into consideration new factors, such as the M.A.U. rating (Monthly Active Users) of the main game applications, as well as their ranking.

(to buy space on Mafia Wars or FarmVille, a real choice…)

They also need to pay attention to the representation of their brands on virtual goods products and their sociability, as in the example of Godiva Chocolates already alluded to in a previous blog

At the crossroads of Facebook and the iPhone, advergaming and virtual goods might soon become the sweetspot of marketing.

This is the logical conclusion we can draw from the last annual conference of Mary Meeker, the renown technology analyst for Morgan Stanley.

Marketing directors wanting to meet the challenge of social media have their work cut out for them.

And maybe it's also fun?

Social Commerce on Facebook, Uh! How Many Storefronts!

2009-11-28T10:54:00.000-08:00

Storefronts opening on Facebook!
What does this entail?

Payvment is an E-commerce solution provider who is proposing a new application entitled Storefront integrated in Facebook. This application allows e-tailers to install stores on Facebook.

The advantage of Storefront is the ability to be launched on any fan page, thus giving “e-tailers” a solution to sell their products on fan pages.

Thus Fan pages are emerging, as the point of passage for Social Commerce, as I previously mentioned with the Nimbit platform dedicated to the music industry. These tools permit, in fact, the integration of business with a “fancasting” perspective.

Moreover, Payvment is compatible with integration via Facebook Connect on e-tailer's web sites

Storefront even goes a step further and combines offers from different e-tailers by mutualizing them. But in doing so with retailers’ offers it is possible however, that Storefront oversteps e-tailer's wishes….

And concerning the brands, will they be overtaken by e-tailers, when now they are the main source of business fan pages?

The success Payvment's remarkable initiative will be measured by the number of Storefronts that are launched on Facebook and deserves close monitoring as it confirms that Social Commerce is indeed progressing and moving “inside Facebook”.

What’s in a (Things) Box?

2009-11-24T11:45:00.000-08:00

ThingsBox, a new social shopping application on Facebook, allows you to select recently purchased products, or items that one wishes to have and give feedback or get feedback from friends.

This touches upon one of the essential components of Social Commerce; receiving reliable opinions before making a purchase.

What is noticeable about ThingsBox is the integration on Facebook and the interaction between using the application and posting comments on walls that generates the propagation of feedbacks.

The ThingsBox application is divided into 3 parts; a “HaveBox”, a “WishBox” and a box entitled “Undecided”.

This division allows subtle interactions between friends. I put in my HaveBox items that I have and hand them over to be commented on, by posting them on my wall or by directly asking the opinion of certain friends.

I can also ask them about the contents of my “Undecided” box, but also ask them about things I have in my “WishBox”, otherwise what are friends for…..

Judging by the list of products recommended by ThingsBox, this application seems to specialize in electronics, laptops, cameras, and telephones…..and suggests buying such items on Amazon.

Is an affiliate business model sufficient for ThingsBox?

Is Your Brand “Direct to Fans”? The Nimbit Way!

2009-11-23T07:25:00.000-08:00

Social networks are establishing new relationships between brands and their clients. In particular, the fans, as shown by Nimbit.

Where, in the world before social networks, admirers were sure bets as clients, the reality is now different.

Always full of enthusiasm, brand and music lovers alike, have become organized fans, finding, for example, on Facebook, information sites for meeting, commenting and adapted marketing campaigns

New marketing networks are on the verge of breaking out.
This is what Nimbit wants to do with the music industry!

Nimbit's concept is simple. Set up on each artist’s fan page a Nimbit boutique called “My Store” where, besides music, fans can also purchase concert tickets, T-shirts, and other paraphernalia of the artist.

In a nut shell, all “Music & Merch”, everything from music to its merchandise that could be of interest to fans.

Many independent artists and labels are utilizing Nimbit.

Let’s take for example the folk singer Ellis Paul whose next album is already available to fans on his fan page, or the London Symphony Orchestra who has a fan page and a Nimbit store.

The “music business” never ceases to amaze us. On one end of the spectrum are major labels, very rigid attitudes, and on the other end is the ingeniousness of ITunes, Deezer, Spotify, and now Nimbit

What does Nimbit offer that ITunes doesn’t?

A direct link with fans, that I call Fancasting, the opposite of Broadcasting. Louis Vuitton demonstrated this phenomenon recently with their Paris fashion show available exclusively on their fan page.

By proposing to market “Music and Merch”, Nimbit is taking that extra step!

Brands Billed in the Blogosphere!

2009-10-30T09:38:00.000-07:00

Are Brands moving in the blogosphere?

This would be consistent with the growing influence of bloggers and brands trend to move towards Social Marketing. We sometimes forget, that blogs, despite their disseminate nature, are one of the most dynamic social media tools.

Gary Hayes' Social Media Counts , that displays in real time the evolution of social medias, indicates, for example, that in one minute, 630 new posts are published on blogs for 2806 new tweets, equaling a ratio of 1 to 4.5.

A very positive ratio for blogs, given that posts are much denser than tweets.

Technorati, the famous blog search engine, annually publishes a State of the Blogoshpere, which also analyzes blogs economic activity.

Marketing executives admit more and more that bloggers post high quality content and attract growing and loyal audiences.

The 2008 study already suggested that a strong percentage of bloggers monetize their sites in different ways:

Average revenue generated by blogs was $6000, with 1% of blogs yielding sales of more than $200,000!

The 2009 study, just published by Technorati, indicates that a large majority of bloggers monetize their sites or would like to.

Nevertheless a variety of ways characterizes the monetization of blogs:

Advertising is not the only path offered to bloggers. As leaders of opinion the influence acknowledged by bloggers is highlighted in the graph below:

This reality can only precede a strengthened investment of brands in regards to blogs.

Even more so, given that posts often mention brand names. 70% of bloggers confirm that they talk about brands.

Technorati, classifying bloggers into several categories (hobbyist, part-timers, self-employed and corporate workers), reveals the following motives:

Ratios and cases already analyzed for Twitter emphasize how important it is that brands consider the influence of blogs. Among those bloggers that mention brands or products in their posts, 47% do so on a monthly basis.

It is in this context that the F.T.C. (Federal Trade Commission), responsible for protecting the American consumers, decided that bloggers, starting on December 4th, should disclose all advertising revenue or sales generated by their blogs.

However, will this apparently positive decision for a greater transparency, be applicable ?

The obligation to disclose all “material connections” between brands and blogs, which is not forced upon traditional media, also risks affecting the press copies for writing reviews.

Facing much protest, which was touched upon this weekend by L. Gordon Crovitz, the influential columnist of The Wall Street Journal, there is a possibility that the FTC is backtracking, at least in part.

Since the FTC decision is likely to include tweets or updates on Facebook, Gordon Crovitz questions,

“There are also practical objections. For example, if you get a free copy of a book and then post a comment about it on Twitter, how many of the permitted 140 characters must be dedicated to the disclosure? Do employees of a company have to disclose the fact of their employment every time they comment on its products through their personal Facebook accounts?”

In wanting to over regulate Social Commerce, will governments become anti-social?

TwitPay, The Sweet Tweet of Money

2009-10-27T13:05:00.000-07:00

Those who say social network in turn say, (or will say), social commerce since conversation and commerce are interlinked, even if there exist many different types of commerce.

Can Twitter, the quintessential conversation platform, also become a commerce platform?

TwitPay, launched in November 2008 as a payment solution between Twitter users, is betting on it.

TwitPay presents itself as a way to transfer money from one user to another. Its strength is its simplicity. All you need is a Twitter account and…….a PayPal account, because the second asset of TwitPay is that it works with PayPal and, therefore, benefits from its user base, its security, and its credibility.

To make a payment simply send a tweet.

Nevertheless TwitPay has not shown huge growth and only has a few more than 5100 followers, (you must follow TwitPay to have an account).

The main reason is that TwitPay can currently only carry out hypothetical transactions between Twitter users, since there is no organized supply market currently on Twitter.

Also, your account risks looking like this:

However, let’s take the gamble that commerce will develop on Twitter and that TwitPay, which takes, in addition to the PayPal commission, only 5 cents (1 nickel) on all transactions less than $1, will find its place, if it lasts until then.

While waiting, here is the “tweetflow” of TwitPay happening simultaneously as I’m writing.

Have you Read Half a Million Tweets?

2009-10-26T11:39:00.000-07:00

Probably not. Even at the height of the live tweet feed #iranelection, I read only around 200 tweets a day, equaling a potential annual amount of 72,000 tweets.

However, Jim Jansen, associate professor of information sciences and technology at Penn State’s College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST), did!

Assisted by a small team of two students along with Abdur Chowdhury, Twitter’s chief scientist, Jim Jansen analyzed 500,000 tweets to study the presence of brands on Twitter.

In the crossroads of marketing, sociology, and technology, social commerce is becoming a “red hot” subject of research and business.

The results of their study were published in the “Journal of the American Society for Information Sciences and Technology.”

Confirming my post “The Twitter Paradox”, brands are often cited on Twitter. With 20% of tweets being about or mentioning brands, Twitter is the quintessential word of mouth marketing platform.

Considering that there are 6 million people who use Twitter on a daily basis who tweet around two times a day, this equals 2.4 million tweets about brands.

Jansen adds:

“It may be right up there with e-mail in terms of communication impact.”

“Businesses use micro-communication for brand awareness, brand knowledge and customer relationship. Personal use is all over the board. A lot of the brand comments were positive. There are some good products out there, or at least products that people are happy with.”

When one of the biggest hesitancies in using social networks by brands is the fear of “bad rap”, it is debatable whether adopting the use of social networks as communication tools is close and unavoidable.

In fact the results of the study by Jansen’s team are telling and can be broken down as follows:

Very positive (no criticism, buying recommended)……..29.8%
Positive (positive feedback, prevails over criticism)……30.8%
Balanced (positive status is mediocre or balanced)…….12%
Negative (globally negative or deceiving)……..15.7%
Entirely negative (no positive feedback, not recommended)……..6.5%
Neutral (no opinion, ask questions)…….5.2%

Brands need not worry because the percentage of negative tweets only account for 22.2% of the total.

Contrary to other marketing strategies which are based on the purchase of key words or the diffusion of emails, social marketing on networks is founded on the creation of conversations, the differentiating feature of the word of mouth strategy.

A challenge for all who think that it is only a question of money and that they would be running the risk of the networks being spammed, word of mouth works according to the relationship system that Jansen presents above.

The publication of a tweet can positively or negatively affect the image of a brand and marginally improve its notoriety.

The tweets circulation among followers and eventual retweets reinforce the confidence and satisfaction and generate loyalty or strength, which in turn shows in an immediate or future purchase.

EBay, With a Little Help From My Friends (The Page Mage Solution)

2009-10-25T03:19:00.000-07:00

EBay to my friends, the Page Mage solution

Talk about Social Commerce to your friends and they will give the name Ebay. And rightly so, since the auction site is the referent of social shopping.

However, Ebay, in its own turn, is impacted by the rapid expansion of social networks and their user friendly quality. Doesn’t auction selling on Ebay run the risk of giving way to social networks where internet users are increasingly spending the majority of their time?

This is where Page Mage can be helpful. A platform for designing Ebay auction templates, which helps improve ones selling page using videos, slideshows or even pop ups.

Page Mage is even taking it one step further by incorporating a “share” function that enables to post a page on Blogger, Facebook, MySpace or LiveJournal.

As indicated by Eric Scifres, CEO of Page Mage,

“By sharing the listing where people are congregating, a listing’s visibility grows exponentially.”

For example, on Facebook, your Ebay offers will appear on your “wall”, allowing your friends to leave comments or to share, in turn, your offer with other friends.

If the transaction is still done on Ebay the solution proposed by Page Mage takes the opposite direction of Facebook Connect by releasing the offers into the social network.

Is this a new trend?

Pepsi “Amp Up”: The Social Excuse Way & The Bad Buzz Strategy

2009-10-22T09:10:00.000-07:00

Pepsi learns to “socially” apologize to women while playing it buzz macho.

Whether a difficult exercise or premeditated calculation, to promote its energy drinks Amp Energy, Pepsi took the initiative and developed an App for the Iphone entitled “Amp Up, Before you Score”, which involves “classifying” women into 24 different categories and obtaining “information” about these, as well as tips on how to seduce them.

They may be only stereotypes and caricatures, but, according to Pepsi, are in tune with Amp Energy’s male public.

Though it's not even certain that men identify with a simplistic vision of seduction, pretending to share common interests by using fitting responses provided by the application, which looks for them on Wikipedia or Twitter.

Would the public of Amp Energy be comparable to Pat Healy in the film There’s Something About Mary!?

Worse, this is the general overview of Amp Up Before You Score as it appears on the App store:

“Here’s how it works:

Identify her type

Got your eye on a girl, and aren’t sure how to get started? Pick out her profile, flip the card, and study up quick with a cheat sheet on the stuff she’s into with lists, links and some surefire opening lines (surefire to what, we won’t say.)

Keep a list

Get lucky? Add her to your Brag list. You can include a name, date and whatever details you remember.

Brag

You got it? Flaunt it. Keep your buddies in the loop on email, Facebook or Twitter.”

Keeping with the "subtlety" of Amp Up, the App includes an "elegant" “After you Score”!

In fact the App was not successful. Launched in mid-summer, “Amp Up, Before you Score” quickly topped out at 1400^th according to Mőbclix, free Apps ranking .

This went on until “bad tweets” mainly from women started to appear little by little on Twitter provoking the release of very negative articles such as the one in the Wall Street Journal on Oct 13 entitled,

“Looking for obnoxious chauvinism? There’s an app for that.”

And so Pepsi found itself in the middle of a real brand image problem.

While Amp Up suddenly had a great public success by becoming, within two days, the 8^th most popular free download, is this result positive for Amp Energy and Pepsi?

Some say yes, associating an energy drink with picking up women, male chauvinism, and seduction, is a well known strategy called “bad buzz”, adapted for this type of product.

However, the bad buzz strategy from now on, needs to take into account the existence of social networks and their capacity to impact a brands reputation.

For Seth Godin, known blogger and author of Tribes,

“Pepsi is learning a valuable lesson in social media marketing the hard way, for too long advertisers and marketers thought it was okay to treat women as objects to sell something. The difference between now and then is [general public] now has a platform to complain about it. This is a symptom of platform shifting. Pepsi’s not the only brand that’s going to have to learn this lesson.”

This “citizen” change shows that the rules of “buzz marketing” have changed! In the past, this was a way to help launch a product by creating a growing buzz, generated by communication actions, before or around the launching of a product.

However, buzz were unregulated and shapeless by definition. With the dawn of social networks, the buzz can no longer avoid taking the form of global conversations, nor can they avoid the control that network users exert through these conversations concerning the value and authenticity of marketing campaigns.

Thus, if Amp Energy could have been satisfied with this transgressive “bad buzz” toward its targeted audience and the growing success of the App on the Iphone, the brand now runs the risk of degrading its image and losing its footing to the playing field of this transgressive aspect.

This risk is high since Amp Energy largely associates itself with sports, including by promoting women.

Amp Energy is left with trying to repair the damage by presenting excuses.

Here the result is also catastrophic because Amp Energy apologizes but doesn't pull the App from the App store.

Once again this is a total lack of authenticity that does not go unnoticed in social network days.

Worse look at the bottom of the excuse. Amp Energy encourages Twitter users to send their comments using a specific hashtag called #pepsifail .

Behind the apparently good idea to open up a specific channel on Twitter, Amp Energy light-heartedly attaches the Pepsi brand, which is much more of a household name than Amp Energy.

The famous site Advertising Age very rapidly did the diagnostics of the situation,

“The Amp brand Twitter feed has only 1,000 followers, compared to about 15,000 for Pepsi, almost 18,000 for Mtn Dew and nearly 5,000 for PepsiCo…

The tag, along with the re-tweets, seems to unnecessarily associate Pepsi and Mtn Dew, two of the company’s largest brands, with a heated and potentially damaging debate. Ostensibly, those who have a problem with the app are not Amp’s core customers, after all.

But now that Pepsi, Mtn Dew, and Pepsi corporate have attached themselves to the debacle, the problem appears much larger, as those brands and, indeed, the entire company may appear insensitive to women. For example, many of the tweets commenting on the app have bypassed the Amp brand entirely and are instead assigning the apology, the App and their distaste to Pepsi.”

Now New Fiction a well known blog claims:

“Alienate Your Female Customer? Pepsi Has An App For That”

Bad buzz or social reputation? It’s up to Pepsi to decide……

When Business Week Top 100 Best Brands go Social !

2009-10-19T10:44:00.000-07:00

When social marketing impacts brand value!

WetPaint, a community site, and the Altimeter Group, a strategy consulting firm, conducted an extremely interesting (and downloadable) study using the online social media brand database Engagement db, which measures the online engagement of brands.

They created a ranking that takes into account the different brand intervention types, in social and community media.

Top 40 extracted from Engagement db

This ranking is taken from the “Best Global Brands 2008”, an annual list of the top 100 rated brands by BusinessWeek/Interbrand.

Media and social tools considered were:

Blogs
Social and community brand networks
External social networks (Facebook, Linked’in, MySpace….)
Twitter
Discussion forums
Photo and video community sites (Flickr, YouTube…..)
Wikis
Rating and tagging sites

The ranking is done by taking into account the number of media used, as well as the level of media participation, by using criteria specific to each media.

This allows to identify 4 types of social media intervention:

The “Mavens” who rank among more than 6 types of highly influential social media. Typical brands in this category are, notably, Starbucks, Google, Dell, even SAP and Accenture. They dominate the list.
The “Butterflies” who also have a very diversified presence, but their implication is, at the moment, weaker, like American Express or Hyundai.
The “Selectives” such as H&M or Philips are very involved in a limited number of social media.
The “Wallflowers”, like McDonalds or BP, who are globally behind.

It is not surprising to find that Starbucks ranks number one on this list, figures at the top of Facebook brand fan pages, and has a high influence and presence on Twitter as well. Starbucks, a real “living place” in the real world is also a social relation network on the Internet.

The study done by Wetpaint and the Altimeter Group is also very interesting in that it finds a correlation between the level of intervention in social marketing and the financial performance of the companies studied, as published by Yahoo Finance or Marketwatch.

The authors of the study, Ben Elowitz, CEO of Wetpaint and Charlene Li, partner of the Altimeter Group, indicate that:

“While much has been written questioning the value of social media, this landmark study has found that the most valuable brands in the world are experiencing a direct correlation between top financial performance and deep social media engagement. The relationship is apparent and significant; socially engaged companies are in fact more financially successful”.

Even though no quantifying data exists to determine the cause and effect relationship between social media engagement and financial results, it is still possible for the authors of the study to explain this relationship:

“Social media engagement and financial success work together to perpetuate a healthy business cycle: a customer oriented mindset stemming from deep social interaction allows a company to identify and meet customer needs in the marketplace, generating superior profits. The financial success of the company, in turn, allows further investment in engagement to build even better customer knowledge, thereby creating even more profits – and the cycle continues”.

Social marketing, therefore, would be the new way of applying the proven concept of a business oriented towards its customers, or customer centric.

As social marketing becomes more and more important due to the growth of social media, the brands involved in these media should, in time, replace the brands that don’t get involved.

Is social media going to overturn the hierarchy of brands? There is definitely indication of movement, as illustrated in the graph below made by Sherpad by relating the Engagement db ranking of the study with the BusinessWeek/Interbrand “Best Global Brands 2008” list.

Shown above, the top 25 Engagement db (vertical yellow line), horizontal axis (growth or loss of position compared to the BusinessWeek list).

This section is dominated by technology companies. We even note the presence of B2B companies like SAP, Accenture, and Oracle, next to Google, Amazon, Ebay, Dell, and Blackberry. However, Starbucks surpasses all of them. Toyota also still figures as the top brand in cars, even though it shows no progression.

Shown above, the top 26-50 Engagement db (vertical yellow line), horizontal axis (growth or loss of position compared to the BusinessWeek list)

This section regroups the consumer goods companies most engaged in social marketing; Nintendo for games, Panasonic for electronics, and Gucci for fashion.

Pizza Hut subscribes to the logic of Starbucks and as for cars, even with Lexus, Toyota is the most engaged.

Coca-Cola, top ranking brand on the BusinessWeek list moves down 49 places in the Engagement db ranking, despite an effort of Facebook and Twitter who will end up reversing this trend.

Shown above, the top 51-100 Engagement db (vertical yellow line), horizontal axis (growth or loss of position compared to the BusinessWeek list)

This last part of this list is divided into two sections:

Brands that show an increase: Several fall into the fashion category, Prada, Hermès, Rolex, Cartier, Armani, Tiffany. This category is very much at the forefront on Facebook. Equally present are wines and spirits, Moet & Chandon, Smirnoff, which illustrate the festive and social nature of….social networks!

Brands that show a decrease: These are numerous, and with an economically weak year, the fact that they are banks is not surprising, Morgan Stanley, HSBC, Goldman Sachs, Merril Lynch, and JP Morgan.

German made cars, Mercedes Benz, BMW, Porsche, and VW show a negative spiral, the opposite of Japanese cars.

Among everyday goods and food items like Marlboro, Budweiser, Gillette, Kellogg’s, Heinz, Wrigley’s, and Dannon, these are still far from the positions of Nestlé, Nescafé, and Nivéa.

Finally, Louis Vuitton drops considerably, but, undoubtedly, turning radical, LV renewed himself recently by organizing his Paris fashion show exclusively for his Facebook fans.

Social Commerce? Just Tell me When!

2009-10-17T12:51:00.000-07:00

The advent of social commerce, this is the whole bet and project of this blog and its team.

If numerous signs have indicated premises for this new form of consummation, keep in mind that this is only a taste of what’s to come.

Jeremiah Owyang, analyst at Forrester Research, predicts a bright future for social commerce….after completing 5 key phases of social media:

Social relationship phase: people connect with each other and share information
Social functionality phase: social networks take on the form of operating systems
Social colonization phase: each experience can now be “social”
Social context phase: the content is personalized and targeted
Social commerce phase: communities define the new products and services

We can see well how social networks complete phase 1.

Phase 2, the era of applications and widgets, social interconnection is already well advanced.

In phase 3, the one of “shared ID”, individual identities shared between networks and websites is also taking place. Thus, a lot of internet users directly share videos on their profile from YouTube on these social networks.

However, a real “portable” identity is not yet in place, despite having the OpenID standard.

Phase 4, the one of social context, involves the availability of targeted content and seems to me more confusing. Fortunately, for Jeremiah Owyang, these phases superpose with time, as indicated in the graph above.

This puts the horizon of social commerce around 2011!

Will we, impatient social consumers, be able to wait?

See Jeremiah Owyang’s article

Just Dropped In To Check What Reputation My Reputation Was In….

2009-10-16T05:56:00.000-07:00

This is from now on the problems brands are facing today.

With 20% of Tweets mentioning some kind of brand or mark, dozens of millions of fans benefiting from the advertising on Facebook, forums and e-commerce sites becoming more and more widespread for hundreds of thousands of Internet users, and with over 40,000 new blogs created daily and millions of emails in circulation, the problem is immense!

Word of mouth has changed its form.

The Internet and, particularly, social media has transformed conversations once limited to the classroom, the coffee machine at work, or mothers, into millions of simultaneous discussions that become more and more interconnected.

How can brands catch on? According to The BIA Kelsey Group, a consulting firm, the expenditure of ERPM (Email, Reputation and Presence Management) will reach $3.1 million by 2013.

Word of mouth is the Holy Grail when it comes to marketing strategies. A rainbow of media tactics on the Internet offer a key to the world, but until that point, there is word of mouth.

Managing the reputation of a brand on the Internet has generated a demand for technological business, professions, and solutions, a little like SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and has become a major business for brand marketing.

Among the existing solutions, to quote BrandsEye that states to be the only tool…..

However, if BrandsEye boasts a series of impressionable functions, enabling to:

listen to the "global discussion" about the brand
offer the possibility to enter into the conversation
react as fast as possible if ever a "crisis" came about
create quantified relationships with up and coming trends
monitor the competition

It is to a great extent defensive ORM (Online Reputation Management) and tools for crisis management.

True, a large number of brands fear a blow to their reputation on the Internet.

The result is a cautious approach to word of mouth on the Internet. Hundreds of millions of discussions about brands develop and form a global conversation which is very quickly becoming the key to a successful e-commerce experience.

Is this conversation destined to stay out of hearing distance form marketing managers?

Matt Booth, (senior vice president and program director), à BIA/Kelsey adds,

"There are too many disparate conversations going on through social networks, user reviews, message boards and online affinity groups for a small business to find let alone track manually......The market has developed in such a way that ERPM (Email, Reputation and Presence Management) is basically a white space that capital and technology will rush to fill."

This requires a lot of skill!
How does one speak when there are so many word of mouth flows?

This is the question that opens access to $3.1 billion by 2013!

From Social Marketing to Social Commerce

2009-10-14T11:33:00.000-07:00

On the Internet e-marketing is linked much more to e-commerce than marketing and commercial activities outside of the Internet.

This is even more the case with social networks. Social marketing and social commerce often overlap each other. If the second one is not yet come about, it is very possible that it will directly develop from the first.

Several recent contributions by reputable commentators are following the leads of both E-Marketer and WebPro News.

Chris Crum wrote on WebPro News “Beyond Social Media Marketing to Actual E-Commerce”

“We talk a lot about social media marketing – using social networks like Facebook and Twitter to market brands and drive traffic to sites. There is no question that these can be effective tools for doing both of these things”.

But will social marketing remain limited to these two objectives? Is it just a question of developing a fan base and then directing it to brand sites or E-commerce sites?

Chris Crum continues:

“As time goes on, it may become helpful or perhaps even necessary to use these tools for actual e-commerce. The common thinking behind social media marketing is that you don’t want to be too sales-pitchy in your conversations, and in some ways that is still very true. However, while social media is largely about conversations, it’s not only about conversations”.

Activity on social networks is not, strictly speaking, only built on conversations. For dozens of millions of young people and more and more adults, social networks have become a “hang out place” that have developed into mediums where one can share photos or even play between friends, on asynchronous mode . All these are social activities that continue or strike up conversations.

He adds however that people are not content with conversations only,

“They are looking for information. They’re using social networks to help them make purchase decisions. Sometimes this is through conversation. Sometimes it’s as simple as being a fan of a brand’s Facebook page and receiving timely updates.”

The commercial outlet of all this social activity is logical. It is the outcome of two symmetrical forces at work.

There is an obvious social aspect to shopping that has been part of our culture for a long time while shopping also plays an integral part in our social relations. Take, for example, the Tupperware network that developed in 1948.

Denise Zimmerman, president of NetPlus Marketing Inc. was actually just interviewed on this subject by E-Marketer, “Social Shopping and the Brand Experience” and talks about a natural evolution.

“If you successfully connect and make shopping valuable to the community in a way that’s easy and accessible and meets their needs, it’s a no-brainer”.

As a matter of fact, Facebook just simplified Facebook Connect implementation on web sites. This is currently the best way to link E-commerce sites to the network which has an extremely practical advantage.

Paul Dunay, Global Managing Dir. of Services, Social Marketing Avaya, was also interviewed by E-Marketer, “The Future of Social Shopping” touching upon the practical aspect of Facebook Connect, and closing with a definition of Social commerce,

“Social commerce is working with or using your social graph, which is defined as your followers or your friends, and allowing them to help you make buying decisions.”

“Facebook Connect would allow you to go to a website like Dell.com and authenticate yourself using your Facebook profile, allow your identity to be known and access friends so you could spark up a chat. So I could say, “Hey, Jeff, I’m looking at this new fancy laptop or this netbook. I heard you bought something. Would you recommend this to me?”

All this, he adds, would be like virtually taking your friends shopping with you. In order to do this, internet search will have to go through your graph of friends, and perform what Paul Dunay calls a “social search”.

However, for this concept to work, it is necessary for those in our social graph to identify their consumer skills, and even some of their purchases allowing them to become public to our friends.

Lack of privacy and consuming information not meant to be shared creates an obvious objection to this idea.

The success of fan pages, however, proves the opposite.

The Brands are their Fans

2009-10-14T11:01:00.000-07:00

If "media is the message" according to the well known Marshall McLuhan equation, on Facebook the "brands are their fans".

Fan pages are one of the most widely used mediums of expression and association on the network. A very significant part of these, around 1 out of 4, concern brands.

Whether it be the official page created by the brand itself, the one initiated by the fans, which the brand subsequently joins forces with or not, or even the pages dedicated to products.
Here are the top 30 on Facebook:

This ranking of products is very revealing:

It reflects more than 54 million pieces of fan feedback and brand support. This number accounts for 1/6 of Facebook. Of course, numerous fans supported many brands.

Starbucks, “a hang our place for real”, is in the lead as first place in the virtual world. This is not an accident!

Neither is the strong presence of candies and various “junk food” brands, such as Nutella, Pringles, Kinder, Ferrero Rocher, Krispy Kreme, Reese’s, Skittles, and the ever essential Toblerone.
What are they all doing on Facebook?

They are expressing an identity, even an attitude. Red Bull is the only beverage present in the top 30 besides Coca-Cola. Unthinkable, without this “attitude” component, the red beverage has achieved a third of the “fan level” of the black liquid.

It is similar with “fashion” brands, whether it is clothing, shoes, accessories, or boutiques, which compete with food. Adidas and Victoria Secret are in the lead, followed by Nike, Converse, Zara, Puma, Lacoste and H&M.

Is a brand not showing in the top 500 in danger? Without a doubt, even if they don’t know it yet!

This virtual use of brands on Facebook is usually doubly passive, meaning that the fans are proud to belong, but are not very active, and that the brands themselves, in many cases, are often left alone due to not being very active, even on their official fan pages.

This is not at all the case with Coca-Cola who uses its fan page as an active tool and shows the way.

McLuhan would say that fan pages are mild, neither cold like the television, neither hot like the radio.
Social networks are a media all their own. Here the media is you! When a user declares him or her to be a fan, brand and user mutually assert themselves.

Got Any Virtual Chocolate Lately?

2009-10-13T11:39:00.000-07:00

AdNectar, for whom this isn’t the first time, and Fun140, publisher of quizzes on Twitter, just launched branded virtual goods, such as Godiva virtual chocolates or Malibu virtual rum, on Twitter or LiveJournal.

(A previous virtual campaign of Godiva on Facebook)

Thus, if a person sends some virtual chocolates to a friend using Twitter, the friend is notified via a direct message, Twitter’s private messaging service.

By clicking on the URL in the message, a link will then direct it to the virtual chocolates and a tweet will alert the sending party when the gift is received.

“People use virtual goods to personalize how they communicate with their friends. Branded items will make this social experience on Twitter more engaging and entertaining” explains Ashvin Kumar, co-founder of Fun140.

By allowing the offering of branded virtual goods, AdNectar diffuses the brands directly into the network of friends. Thus, socially accepted, these goods benefit from a viral dissemination that is much more effective than displaying advertising banners.

AdNectar's clients

3 years ago the brand fan pages, now common, might have seem to be a marginal and exotic media.

Today, given the continual increasing widespread use of virtual goods, it is more than likely that branded virtual goods are going to become one of the strongest social marketing tools, because it subscribes to the new implicating, engaging, and recreational marketing logic.

A previous campaign for Godiva chocolates in virtual form, conducted by AdNectar on Facebook before Valentine’s Day showed impressionable propagation results.

Golf, Fans, and Brands, the Golfsmith case

2009-10-12T00:39:00.000-07:00

The growing popularity of Facebook fan pages or their equivalent on Twitter indicates a major change in E-marketing and the direction it is taking.

No longer is it enough to give consumers the floor on Internet sites, which, in reality, few sites do. From now on it is necessary to start multiple conversations with fan pages on Facebook and followers on Twitter.

With 7000 fans on Facebook and 1200 followers on Twitter, Golfsmith, a producer and distributor of golf equipment, has a notable and innovative presence on social networks, yet remains average.

Eric Mahlstadt, Senior Online Store Manager, talks of his business strategy in relation to social networks.

“The value right now to us as a retailer is not as much about what kind of people these are, but what kinds of experiences they’re having. We’re interested in providing as many choices and platforms as possible for our customers to share thoughts and ideas and provide input. The struggle then becomes having enough engaged ears to hear all the feedback and to be nimble enough to act on that feedback”

Golfsmith already has an open website where comments are welcome and the home page strongly encourages users to leave feedback.

In order to link user feedback on its site and those from fan pages on Facebook or followers on Twitter, Golfsmith chose a social marketing solution proposed by Bazaarvoice, a specialist in “community management”, called Social Network Accelerators.

How does it work?

“With the new Social Network Accelerators, Bazaarvoice ensures that companies achieve more from social commerce by using social networks like Facebook and Twitter as a distribution channel for user-generated content created on brand sites.”

How Do You “Metric” Word of Mouth? The Twitalyzer case

2009-10-11T08:05:00.000-07:00

How do you measure word of mouth?

The Twitalyzer case!

While more and more brands are looking to establish a presence on social networks, there is an intrinsic difficulty in measuring the return on investment (ROI) obtained by marketing on social networks.

In any case, when it comes to analyzing more than click performance of ads on Facebook, for example, by measuring the impact of a fan page, of a Twitter account, or of word of mouth, the “metrics” still need to be defined.

Firstly, is it necessary to measure word of mouth?

Elaine Gantz Wright, who’s blog is specifically geared toward fund-raising activities on social networks and how they can help transforming society, just published an interesting post on the subject, “The ROI that would be King” .

She mentions a comment made by new special media journalist, Clay Shirky that can be applied perfectly to marketing problems encountered in social networks.

“A revolution does not happen when a society adopts new tools. It happens when society adopts new behaviors.”

Elaine Ganz Wright adds,

“And I think that quote sums up the core conundrum. At the end of the day, social media is really not “a program” at all. It is a fundamental shift in the way customers, donors, constituents, and employees consume and produce information. Its behavior- a change in the way we are in the world.”

As is happens, the effect of marketing in social networks can be evaluated much like banner ads of the internet are or buying keywords though Google.

It’s not the R.O.I that we need to talk about for judging the impact conversations have on brands, fan pages with blogs or word of mouth in general; any of these marketing tools or situations that allow an “engagement “or, translated, an “implication” around brands to develop.

Elaine Ganz Wright talks about replacing the R.O.I with R.O.E (return on engagement).

Evaluating is of utmost importance!

This is where Twitalyzer comes into play and analyzes the impact of personal or brand accounts on Twitter.

The idea behind Twitalyzer comes from the development of several different metrics to calculate the impact of an account on the micro-blogging network, not only by its popularity (the number of followers).

What are the criteria?

Impact, or the number of “followers”
Authority, or the number of times you are “retweeted” by others (RT)
Generosity, or the number of times that you “retweet” (RT) others
Rapidity, the number of tweets that you publish within a 7 day period
Clout, or the number of times that your account is referenced by others
Signal to noise ratio which calculates the number of tweets that include URL’s, number of tags, RT’s and web addresses, meaning all the tweets that create socialization and information compared to those that are only anecdotes.
Influence, which balances the different aforementioned measures

Twitalyzer has developed new metrics adapted to the presence on Twitter. Indeed they only calculate the impact of your account and not free word of mouth that mentions a brand or a person independent of their account.

But at least these tactics go beyond the number of followers and separate the “influential” tweets form those that are purely anecdotal.

Let’s take for example the two brands Starbucks and Coca-Cola who took full advantage of the turn around of social networking and use the most influential Facebook fan brand pages, resulting in respectively, 3,850,000 fans and 3,706,000 fans (Sept 09).

Starbucks is ahead of Coca-Cola again on Twitter!

Here are the score boards developed by Twitalyzer:

Starbucks has a profound influence and a very high signal to noise ratio, referring to, in some way, the quality of its tweets, which also shows its weight (clout) to be at a maximum level.

Coca-Cola doesn't score badly either on its signal to noise ratio, but its authority is much weaker. It is also less generous than Starbucks, meaning less active in retweets (RT) than other accounts. Is Coca-Cola more egocentric than Starbucks?

Should we think that the Twitter audience likes Coca-Cola less than the Facebook audience, or is the black liquid just missing 140 characters of savoir-faire?

Why Would You Want to be Part of a Retail Community?

2009-10-11T07:26:00.000-07:00

Why the devil would you when hundreds of traditional E-commerce sites compete with ideas, discounts, and creativity?

This is the question that Ripple6, a social media platform for e-commerce, asked in a survey of almost 1006 American consumers by the E-tailing group. This survey was already alluded to in a previous post about using news feeds for business purposes.

It is interesting to point out that the first two results validated each one by about 50% of consumers, both forming two different, but, at the same time, perfectly compatible and complimentary poles.

Those that want to benefit from the knowledge and experience of others, those that are interested by the “wisdom of the crowd”
Those that want to pass on their knowledge and their experience, the “wiki motivation”.

The equal importance of these two groups is astounding. There are numerous contributors to Wikipedia, where as the number of the users of the encyclopedia is far above . The ratio of potential participants to visitors in social commerce groups is 1 to 1.

Other motivations, such as saving time or brand affinity, respectively more “selfish”, and less “implicative”, gather significant but much more inferior votes.

Brand affinity, a constant on Facebook fan pages, is another aspect that is taken from social marketing rather than social commerce. It also means less consumer independence with the brand. So, the Iphone fan has a less critical eye than the Iphone user who lets the consumer benefit from his/her experience. His/her social value is less. It is of course possible to be both fan and critic at the same time (as with me).

Finally, let’s point out that the Ripple6 survey did not consider the “discount group’s” possible motivations for achievement that, nonetheless, in its own way, summarized individual motivation and collective interest.

Did You Engage Vuitton Parading on Facebook?

2009-10-11T07:13:00.000-07:00

What a superb idea Vuitton had!

Replaying his fashion show on Facebook. Where as the “live” fashion show was reserved for celebrities and other VIP, the “social” fashion show was accessible to fashionistas everywhere on the Facebook fan page “The Art of Travel by Louis Vuitton”.

This typical social marketing strategy allows one to break free from new marketing trends: “live” vs. “social”, this is the new alternative.

Or rather “live” & “social” that could quickly be expressed by “live” x “social”, with the showing on Facebook allowing members to discuss between themselves and increase the impact, as the collected insights on Facebook reveal.

Among all the media choices available the television broadcast is losing, and, also noted, was that neither the Louis Vuitton site itself, even though more directly linked to his collections, nor YouTube, another possible media platform for playing videos, was chosen.

By using Facebook, Vuitton chose to give his fans priority. If the site keeps the video 24 hours after being played, the fan page finds significance in hosting the event and allowing fans to express themselves and to benefit from an exclusive opportunity.

Here are some of the most significant comments:

The idea: LV your idea excellent…. “…….. always love u louis vuitton……” “LV is the ultimate style statement”….. “Can’t wait to watch it. LV is the BEST!”….. “well done!!!!!! It was a nicely planned event!!!!
The fashion show: “I saw very nice bags, me, who is a fan of louis vuitton”….. “LV is awesome I love the tradition canvas, the best!”…… “wasn’t crazy about the clothing”….. “nice! but the bags are really nice! :)”….. “The new line of bags is beautiful!”….. “In my opinion, epic fail: -don’t like the shoes (do I spy UGGS?!) nor the fur tails – Afro stuff capturing all the attention” “Bravo Louis Vuitton….the show was butter smooth….the colors were softly bright….the texture of the fabric was exquisite, especially in the lace-like shorts….I really liked the unique look….the furry shoes in assorted colors were outstanding….all the glimmer, colors, and uniqueness; deserves a real stand up ovation….YOU ARE THE BEST…” “love it….it gives me enough confidence……” “Awesome!! Beautiful!!!....” “Amazing show as usual…am so loving the bright color on the bags…nice”… “awesome colors, style and accessories are amazing!” “luv, luv, luv” “mad shoes…love it and the new reinvention of the kitty heel…love it”.

Over a period of 3 days 6500 points of positive feedback were obtained and a strong growth of the page was seen with The Art of Travel by Louis Vuitton increasing from 640,000 fans to 729,000 fans in a span of a few weeks, while still expecting for a growing amount of comments on fans personal walls.

Louis Vuitton achieved a successful advertising campaign and highlighted the appeal of his new accessory line, especially the bags. Above all, Vuitton was a forerunner and paved the way (with elegance) on Facebook.

if you missed it, the fashion show is still accessible on the Louis Vuitton site

What do the “Waves” of Google bring to Social Commerce?

2009-10-10T11:44:00.000-07:00

The sudden arrival of Google Wave last week, where100,000 guests were each able to invite 5 other people, made a powerful sweep over Web 2.0.

In Google own terms:

"What is a wave?

A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.

A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time."

What are the benefits of Wave and how can it change E-commerce?

The main idea here is conversation. With traditional E-commerce sites the products are displayed with information about each item, the client is then directed to the bottom of a “funnel” that reduces the number of clicks before verifying the purchase.

This new social commerce tool allows the consumer to rate the products, share information, and inquire about the items posted.

For merchant sites and brand sites, it is more about involving the consumer than directly persuading them…

It is global conversation around a brand, a product, or a service that makes up the funnel.

Up until now, this communication technique has been poorly structured, its persistence is limited, and the consumers don’t really discuss among themselves. They read published information by others who they do not know. At best it becomes a forum and the funnel is dismantled.

A social network is the only place where one can engage in conversation between those they know.

It is here that Google Wave comes into play.

By organizing conversations in the form of a document (Wave) that in turn includes other published documents (blogs, other sites, forums, emails, social networks, photo and video sites, SMS…) Wave organizes and centralizes these discussions.

Discussing a hotel, a Netbook, a stroller, a movie, or a diet pill can take new form in that the consumers will play a role in the power given to brands and merchants, in the hope of selling better.

Wave is a potentially very powerful social commerce tool, perhaps even overshadowing Facebook and Twitter. Social Networks can lose their monopolies of the conversation, and this one can breakdown the barriers of each site.

Ride the Wave!

RackUp, the shopping game where you are sure to win!

2009-10-10T11:24:00.000-07:00

Social Commerce permanently increases new forms of e-commerce and business models. There will be winners and losers!

It is difficult to say whether RackUp, a new start-up model presented at the TechCrunch conference will succeed in asserting itself. It does present more than one advantage:

RackUp renews auction items. RackUp makes shopping fun, and RackUp assures you of winning!

How does RackUp work? It is hard to explain without having used it before and I recommend the video demo, but here are the main aspects:

RackUp is an on-line auction system of gift cards and gift certificates, with all kinds of attractive packages with companies like American Airlines and Travelocity Hotel, including Legal Sea Food restaurants, or brands like Calloway Golf or MocaShop jewelers.

RackUp has auction rooms for gathering bidders who want to purchase gift certificates for a particular brand.

Each bid is very quick, lasting only 60 seconds. An auction is held every two minutes. Therefore there is no long waiting period.

At the very beginning of the auction, each bidder can purchase a gift certificate, but only the first will buy it at the purchase price, each of the following bidders will increase the bidding price by 10cents so that the 10^th bidder will pay $51 for a gift certificate of $50.

However, as items are purchased, each bidder progresses to a level which gives complimentary value (from 3 to 100%) to his/her certificate.

This progression continues for 60 seconds. If you reach 100% after 60 seconds and the bid is marginal, it will be cancelled. However, nothing is lost, you can start over, paying a little bit more for your certificate, for which you are assured a 3% reduction.

In the example given by RackUp, the purchase of a gift certificate for American Airlines at $50 for a price of $51.20 will in turn become a certificate of $76.80. Well done!

RackUp is part of the array of on-line auction sites that Ebay made popular world wide, casual bidding that has become an incredible success with women and the gift card phenomenon.

RackUp is pretty clever in emphasizing the social aspect of bidding. The competition sets people up to bid against each other but also increases the stakes by increasing the bonuses.

The bonus system, which is linked to group or personal purchases, is starting to appear more and more often in the new economic models of on-line auction sites.

In these tough economic times, the bonuses given by RackUp are a type of discount and will become more popular.

While you wait, is there anyone that has to take an American Airlines flight?

Team with Twangu?

2009-10-10T02:24:00.000-07:00

Form teams with Twangu?

Speaking of social commerce, here is a new Facebook application that is 100% "team commerce".
Only a few weeks old, Twangu wants to initiate this wave of social commerce predicted to be massive within the next several months or years.

How does Twangu work? Facebook users are invited to form "teams" that want to purchase items for a fixed price by the users themselves.

Once these groups are formed Twangu intervenes and places each team with a vendor of the product wanted, provided the seller agrees to purchase conditions of the team, notably on the price proposed for the item.

Items are usually purchased through PayPal and Twangu takes great care to guarantee that the transactions do no take place on Facebook itself, but on a secured site. Obviously the idea of giving out your credit card number several days before buying the item creates a considerable problem, but Twangu is hoping that the possibility of getting your hands on something for a cheaper price will entice users to overcome their fears…..

And what kinds of teams are formed using Twangu?

Here is a sneak peak….

Ipod Touch 32GO for $100; PS3 games (without precision) for $30; jeans for $25; Wii Rockband 2 for $50; Windows7 for $49.95; Iphone 3G's at $199; "Future beach" kayaks for $199; Skullcandy helmets for $21.50 etc….while scrolling through red shoes, red dresses and red accessories for $1.

It is still too soon to tell whether this intermediary business model and the idea of the "group discount" implemented by Twangu will work! Let's bet that other projects are in the works and is owed to the innovation of Twangu.

Social commerce and the "discount group" are, in any case, signed on in the context of the current recession.

The prestigious Wall Street Journal, in its Smart Money column, published an article in January entitled "How to Score Group Discounts With Strangers".

Shweta Oza, a Marketing professor at the University of Miami states in this article:

"Businesses worried about slumping sales and continued cutbacks in consumer spending are more amenable to offering group discounts. You're enticing them by bringing them in more business, which they're hunting for in today's economy".

The Twitter Paradox

2009-10-09T12:57:00.000-07:00

Following the serial “Where is Twitter’s business model”, an article published on the trendy on-line magazine Fast Company.

“Twitter Doesn’t Sell Advertising”, Yet 20% of Tweets Mention Brands”

Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, nonetheless continues to say that Twitter is not ready to sell [advertising] space. There are so many brands mentioned in the tweets, however, it’s enough to make any one give in!

Twitter archives already represent a database of comments on very popular brands.

By the time this post is published, Renault, passively defeated by Twitter’s French community, would without a doubt pay good money to analyze conversations.

Read the rest on Fast Company

Friends and Feeds

2009-10-09T12:48:00.000-07:00

These are two key players in the upcoming Social Marketing and Social Commerce revolution!

Abbey Klassen is a huge believer and talks about it on the very serious on –line media and marketing source Advertising Age:

“Social Shopping Takes on New Meaning With Newsfeed Purchasing”

1-800 flowers and the start-up Alvenda not only are beginning to sell on their customers Facebook pages, but are preparing to advertise through feeds also.

The art of business is being restructured!

Abbey Klassen goes on to say,

“A recent study by Ripple6 and The E-tailing group suggests 83% of people want to share information about their purchases and that 43% credit making purchases as a result of their social networking surfing”

Read the rest on Advertising Age

Sherpad: the social-commerce revolution blog!

2009-10-09T12:28:00.000-07:00

An e-marketing and e-commerce revolution is going to come about. It is the irruption of social commerce using feeds, blogs, social networks, and community sites.

The idea behind this blog is to chronicle this revolution, regardless of the medium & technology it uses.

Brands can no longer ignore the profound changes taking place on the web nor the social relationships brought on by the explosion of community based media and social networks. Sales and marketing companies can’t afford to turn a blind eye either.

E-commerce is on the verge of important changes. Several brands and start-up sites are starting to work differently by providing information, expert knowledge and recommendations, thus, in short, giving the power back to the consumers, and especially to the various multifaceted links that are accessible to them.

Ebay is, of course, the most popular site that started this revolution, however, beyond Ebay, there are numerous other models that are slowly cutting out their little niche in the world of social commerce.

We bet that within the next 1 to 2 years the face of e-marketing and e-commerce will take a new direction.

Several times a week, this team of writers, Pierre (virtual world and social network creator), Bertrand, (financial analyst), Jerome, (Internet and e-commerce entrepreneur), and Arnaud, (Web 2.0 IT specialist), who are based in Paris and New York, will talk about their discoveries, practices and projects by making you a part of a most innovative and unusual world.