The team from Read Write Web dedicated last week’s RWW Live podcast to “Shopping 2.0”. A worthy read is especially part two of the analysis.
It covers advanced topics in the area of social commerce, such as implicit social recommendations (like Polyvore) and ways how merchants can profit from the social web or respectively social networks:
"Kurt Collins, VP of Business Development of Cartfly, replied that there is now a lot of implicit social recommendations across social networks and blogs.
Jack Jia, founder and CEO of Baynote, noted that "99% of the crowds" are silent and so the implicit recommendation data that Kurt referred to is very valuable. It's crucial, said Jack, to tap into the interests, likes and dislikes of that invisible crowd. He added that that it may not be 'friend' data either, as we currently tend to think of it in social networks."
While many dealers still operate with a focus on wide product selection and high pressure marketing, there are still only a few (the live shopping operators not excluded) who have developed a fine tuned instinct for what their online customers really want and then drive their product supply in that direction:
"In our previous site launch, we spent months building a database of products, opened the doors of the site, and it was just too much product, and not enough interaction with our customer base.
In our relaunch, we decided to go social first, e-commerce second. Working on our customer relationships first. The site is a transition from our successful eBay business to a more controllable blog/e-commerce solution."
This is a phenomenon that can be strongly observed from sites such as Rugby.com or the overhauled Shutterfly.
Another good example is the brand new party planning service Celebrations.com, a distinctly separately operated initiative from the gift and flower merchant 1-800-FLOWERS (see press release).
Originally posted in German by Jochen Krisch, translated by Jason Soo.
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