After starting their own social network fwb (“Friends with Benefits”) which is heavily reliant on (product) image collections, Lockerz has now acquired the photo sharing site Plixi:
"Media sharing is a key component of social networking, and Plixi (soon to be Lockerz Photos) is at the forefront of the industry, serving more than 1 billion photos monthly.
"The acquisition enables Lockerz to offer its millions of members the most social and easy-to-use photo sharing experience, as well as introduce millions of Plixi customers to Lockerz' interactive, engaging and rewarding site features, including e-commerce, music and videos."
Over time, Lockerz and Plixi plans to develop new media sharing features to engage customers, such as the ability for Lockerz members to share their activities, photos and videos on other social networks.
The newly combined company will also focus on increasing and enhancing celebrity content."
For 2011, Vente-Privé has announced that they want to offer their e-commerce know-how to external companies, “as service provider in the areas of logistics, customer service (call center) and marketing”.
eBay is a phenomenon. Because while many online merchants are just now thinking about how to bring more excitement and variety into their offerings, eBay is going the opposite direction by toning down their auctions and flooding the marketplace with fixed price commodity products.
So how is eBay standing in 2010/2011 (PDF)? As usual, it’s difficult to figure out. Does the bump in revenues in Q4 indicate a trend reversal for fixed price sales, or is it mostly effects from marketing activities?
eBay isn’t prone to making comments about the problems they’re having with their core business.
How is eBay’s credibility affected by their takeover of Brands4Friends, when this move essentially makes them direct competitors with their own merchant users (in Brands4Friends operating regions: currently Germany, Austria, UK and Japan)?
The eBay CEO doesn’t talk about this, preferring a blanket statement:
"We tell merchants, we will never compete with them."
Sure, not many will be picking apart such details so closely. The obvious tactic is to not acknowledge what is doubtless a strategic balancing act. On one hand, eBay wants to sing the praise of their mobile apps, but on the other hand, they are toning down everything which is particularly interesting and attention-grabbing for the mobile market (such as auctions).
Completely ignored since the departure of Meg Whitman is the social aspect, one of the original roots of the company.
Originally posted in German by Jochen Krisch, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.
It addresses methods by which customers can use social networking tools to select items while shopping and solicit opinions on the appropriateness of the articles from friends. In some variations, store employees could also tap into the system to offer their feedback on proposed purchases and alternatives available in the store."
It looks like Apple is heavily preparing to offer in one form or another specific platforms for merchants to tap into social commerce with users owning one of the iOS-devices.
Laura Wade-Gery is leaving Tesco.com to join the new Tesco UK Board of Director. Nick Lansley provides some interesting insights into the organisational structures of Tesco:
"Laura Wade-Gery, CEO of Tesco.com is leaving Tesco.com to join the newly formed Tesco UK Board of Directors reporting to our forthcoming new Tesco chief Philip Clarke.
Laura's role is being taken by Ken Towle, currently CEO of Tesco's China operation. Ken will have the new title 'Director of Internet Retailing'.
Ken Towle was the person who led us at the origins of Tesco online in the 1990s. When I joined the fledging 'team of ten' in early 1995, Ken was project manager for the "see what we can do with this thing called the internet" venture.
It is interesting to note that Ken is 'Director of Internet Retailing' rather than continuing the 'CEO' role."
In the course of our book recommendation series we introduce from time to time our “best-of” collection according to relevant categories. After the Viral Library, here we introduce our picks for those innovators who are pioneering new business ideas.
Germany may be the creative fatherland of BMW, Zeiss, Montblanc and Hugo Boss, but it seems not to be so successful for the online world.
But why actually? Never in the past has there been so much new to discover and invent. Never has it been so easy to create completely new business models and with them also new online markets.
Umair Haque provides innumerable thought provoking ideas for new and regenerative business models in his book, The New Capitalist Manifesto.
“Free” from Chris Anderson is an intellectual challenge for any person with an entrepreneurial bent: How can I deliver free services and still make good money at the same time?
In a third direction, Jeff Jarvis leads with the question, “What would Google do?” against the backdrop of a various of industries.
In total we have five recommended sources of inspiration for pioneers of new online business models:
All on the list are worthwhile reads. Because with the advent of Vente-Privée, Groupon and the like, we realize that the traditional online shops of today have a limited future in the e-commerce world of tomorrow.
These and other book recommendations can be found in our book series.
What will happen this year with online video? Which developments can we count on and what will be the effects for e-commerce businesses? We venture a look into the future and highlight which trends we need to keep an eye on:
Trend 1: Product videos and slideshows continue to take a lead role.
This is less a like trend but rather a more like a given. Just to be noticed via Google by new customers (read: video SEO), merchants will be increasing investment in videos and then using the internet for distribution.
Trend 2: (Professional) Video content floods the web like never before.
Using only an iPhone 4 last July, MyMuesli created and edited a video commercial. Beyond that there are several economically prices pocket camcorders on the market such as the Flip Ultra HD which can be used on the road to take simple and spontaneous videos.
Via the portable all-in-one devices, video clips will become a commodity. And the increased availability of smartphones which can take videos means that an increasing amount of video content will be publicized on YouTube and similar video sharing sites. No wonder – cameras will be everywhere and content will be directly uploadable.
Trend 3: The online video market will become more fragmented and fast paced.
Screenplay? Camera? Editing program? If you use a micro-blogging service such as TwitVid, no additional hardware or software is necessary to produce your videos:
Videos are captured with webcam on PC and stored in a micro-video format. Spontaneous ideas and image content can be converted quickly to product advertisements.
Trend 4: YouTube indeed becomes an e-commerce marketplace
The idea of direct product links in YouTube videos is certainly not new, but until now the implementation has been used by mainly by large firms such as Amazon.
An example from French Connection visualizes in a great way how products can be interactively advertised over YouTube and then sold. Further merchants will certainly be taking lead from this example.
Trend 5: Video mail-outs will gain increasing relevance
This year will see more companies embedding videos directly into their newsletters. The workaround with a fake-player will become obsolete (an embedded image showing video controls which is actually just a link to an external video site).
In the long run, more email programs will support the embedding and playing of videos. Google is already on the way. And if you are still sceptical about these developments (read: security concerns), remember there used to be a time where even watching any videos on the web was a rarity.
Trend 6: The hybrid TV market is coming slowly but surely.
Despite the grumblings about Google TV, the convergence of television and the PC is not to be stopped. In the future, consumers will be using all-in-one devices in the home to surf and to watch TV.
But which type of device is leading the pack? All-in-one PCs with touchscreens and TV tuners? Or “classic” HD TVs with a browser and internet connectivity? And which company will develop the first usage model which will really be fun for the living room couch? When is gesture based control coming?
Other interesting predictions regarding the online video market can be found on Justin Foster’s blog (“Top Ten Predictions”).
Originally posted in German by Stephan Meixner, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.
Within two weeks more than 200 people signed up for this year's Live Shopping Days March 21-22 in Berlin, most of them ecommerce entrepreneurs and managers. As expected there's a huge interest from the investment community again.
Live Shopping Days 2010 (Pictures: Kersten A. Riechers)
We are working hard to come up with a really exciting agenda for entrepreneurial minded people. There are several slots for ambitious new startups. If you want to participate send us a short proposal or join us in the expo area.
If you want to take part, there's only one rule: excite us, don't bore us (with your ecommerce service and/or your business concept).
Last year we had speakers from Woot! (sold for $110m to Amazon in July), BuyVIP (sold for $100m to Amazon in September), Brands4Friends (sold for $200m to eBay in December) and startups like KupiVIP (from Russia) or DailyDeal, who got big investment rounds in 2010.
The Live Shopping Days, now in its fourth year, is the only ecommerce event fully focussed on new businesses opportunities and the future of ecommerce.
The conference is organized by Exciting Commerce as part of the Exciting Future Corp. (for ecommerce)
"$7,300,000,000: expected global revenue generated by the virtual goods industry in 2010. This is huge, considering the $60 billion generated in 2009 by the video game industry as a whole, and clearly shows that browser-based gaming is making great strides."
Keep in mind though that the article was written by Ted Sorom who is the CEO of Rixty, a virtual currency platform.
