Can shopping work with social networks?

Social Networks and Shopping

mecommerce looks pretty cool. I like the idea of being able to get my shopping done as I’m browsing around.

Me too, Anne. I hope MeCommerce — or something like it — catches on. I think it has real potential for micro-commerce or distributed commerce on the Web. Thanks for the comment.

Hi Mathew,

On the personal recommendation casual or impulse shopping side of things, I believe that some of these shopping ideas have the potential to work on a small scale and in a grass roots way.

As to growth of serious shopping on the web, beyond the scope of established specialty retailers, I believe that the missing piece is the information architecture that underlies a good search function. If you know exactly what you’re looking for, you just go to Google or your fav maven site in the category. If you’re browsing for yourself or gifts, however, with just a general idea, there isn’t a single network yet that’ll return many if any results, other than eBay.

I do believe that this is an area with massive growth potential, but have not seen anyone come close to executing in it yet.

Vera

This CNN article on recommendation engines relates to the topic as well:

Aggregation (as opposed to linking/webbing) of individual recommendation and reputation, applied to products, is the interesting question (imo).

Interesting point Vera – right now a lot of social shopping sites focus on niche long tail items rather than anything mainstream. Actually, at Crowdstorm we’re trying to do both and give people the flexibility to share and talk about whatever product exists. Now the trick is do you either add all products across the internet into the site or do you let users upload them as they see fit so that you’re only talking about products that are seen as interesting by the community..?

Hi Philip,

imo the key word in your comment is community. A community is more than a congregation of people. I checked out Crowdstorm and was impressed by the fact that, despite all the product recommenders being anonymous, they give a good impression of being real and reputable. Tough thing to pull off. It often hinges on what I term micro authority (as well as communication skills, of course), and is most widely evidenced online for things tech related.

On the question of bringing in wider selection of products, here’s the first idea that comes to mind. You could deliver a broad pool in any category that you have (an) active respected member(s) advising in and offer them as not yet commented on. When one gets recommended it moves into that primary category/area. Maybe also handpick through personal relationships a few maven types in categories you’d like to see the selection broadened to.

Vera

Thanks, for those comments, Vera — those are good points. I think community is the missing ingredient as well, and unfortunately it is also by far the most difficult thing to engineer. And thanks for stopping by, Philip — Crowdstorm is an interesting take on the problem.

[...] Can shopping work with social networks? » Mathew Ingram: mathewingram.com/work services for social shopping (tags: shopping social-media social-tools) [...]

Now that’s an interesting idea…. have a kind of “product pit” where all the products exist but have not made it into the Crowdstorm community until they get recommended or pushed to the front by a trusted, reputable member…

Sounds a bit like dig then doesn’t it…

[...] Looks like the American Marketing Association has its eye on social networks like MySpace as the shopping malls of the Web era. The AMA came out with a survey on Friday that said 47 per cent of people would go to such sites to research Christmas gifts – and better still, 29 per cent said they would buy things there if they could. You could almost hear the “cha-ching” while reading the story. This idea has been commented on already by (among others) Muhammad Saleem at The Mu Life and Pete Cashmore at Mashable. As Froosh points out at HipMojo, News Corp. has been looking for ways to “monetize” MySpace ever since they paid more than half a billion dollars for it. But how best to do it? Not everyone is crazy about the idea of Wendy’s and Burger King setting up profiles for their advertising characters, and it’s hard to blame them. So how to integrate selling things with something like MySpace – or even just regular blogs, for that matter. As Pete has mentioned, there are plenty of companies trying to solve that problem, including MyPickList.com or “social shopping” sites like Crowdstorm, Wists, ThisNext and others. But the one I think has the most potential, although it doesn’t get written about a lot, is Goodstorm and its “MeCommerce” service, which is still in early beta. In effect, it’s a sidebar shopping widget that allows blog readers to click and buy things without ever leaving the sidebar. It needs some work, but it’s an appealing idea – click to select a book or T-shirt or DVD, then click and enter your details, then click to buy it. And 50 per cent of the revenue goes to the site that hosts the widget. Goodstorm recently launched an API developers’ contest to see what kinds of widgets people could come up with. Comments Tag: MySpace, Shopping, eCommerce Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Yahoo! My Web | Furl Bookmark WebProNews: View All Articles by Mathew Ingram Receive Our Daily Email of Breaking eBusiness News About the Author: Mathew Ingram [note only one "t" in Mathew] is a technology writer and blogger for the Globe and Mail, a national newspaper based in Toronto, and also writes about the Web and media at http://www.mathewingram.com/work and http://www.mathewingram.com/media. WebProNews RSS Feed More Blog Talk Articles Contact WebProNews [...]

[...] Selling Your Reputation On The Web It sounds less …crass, to talk about valuing your ‘brand’ and respecting your loyal readership, and displaying integrity via adhering to ethical principles, and practicing transparency… oh, and, replacing the for sale sign with ‘monetization opportunity’.The blogosphere offers fascinating studies in shifting relationships between business and the consumer. No successful online community previously empowered the individual to this extent.eBay, for example, enables individuals but deliberately ‘masses’ them. One could even say that, by insisting on remaining ‘just a venue’ and ignoring unethical and fraudulent behavior for too long it actively disabled individuals.Previous communities which empower individuals are, for the most part, either protected cloisters, or ingrown special interest groups, or traditional grass roots movements.Until blogging, individual empowerment has been extremely limited. Only those very few tech sophisticated enough to build and promote their own web presence successfully, or wealthy enough to pay for it, were previously empowered.No one has come up with the next chapter yet, either. Currently popular ventures include Threadless (which is grassroots and promotes the current zeitgeist through aggregation of popular opinion on individual contributions), ASPs such as the fab 37signals suite, and enhancing the public space with privacy tools like Vox does. Although each of these examples is enabling in its way, all are private need centered.Communality and the wisdom of crowds also has its place, and always will, but I doubt that anyone can subsume individual empowerment …put the genie back in the bottle, if you will.The future of individual voices on the web is not traditional journalism, but it is the prominent bloggers who came from old media that, more than anyone, sit visibly in the awkward fast lane of this new form where consumers and business are converging.They are in the fast lane because they have the training and skills to write prolifically and get read, which means that their traffic is substantial compared to most individuals on the web. As money tries to figure out how to buy all this traffic and attention, it is natural for the voices with the largest audiences to stand out.They’re in the most awkward position, because part of their loyal readers’ trust is based on their perceived purity and impartiality. That this perception is faulty is totally irrelevant; the fact is that old media (who used to pay their bills) created it. Most people believe that great reporting and journalism and television are all free. They persist in this belief even as they pay their cable or satellite bill every month. The dollars traded for a newspaper go to the company that prints it, not to their favorite columnists, and so on. At least a bit of the antagonism directed at Rush Limbaugh is because he got rich doing his thing.The numbers of professional bloggers who have struggled the most vocally with selling their reputation is already rapidly diminishing. They can’t go on about it forever, given that they still have to eat just like everyone else, and most have made their commercial beds. Their solutions range from private sponsors, ‘transparently’ disclosed on a page most don’t visit, to tasteful and limited traditional advertising. New and creative schemes for monetization, such as the Best Buy holiday shopping bloggers that Steve Rubel posted about last night, the Goodstorm’s MeCommerce and others posted about by Mathew Ingram, as well as recommendation engine and other aggregation concepts, are beginning to map the most accessible of these uncharted waters.Selling your reputation, and therefore the trust your followers have put in you, is something that many would, on the theoretical surface, define as a betrayal of trust. That theoretical surface of popular belief, though, is melting like thin ice when recontextualized between real people. Joe the columnist isn’t getting a salary from the local News anymore is easily comprehended by the majority of people the first time advertising pops up on Joe’s blog. Ok, says the average person, but my thoughts and opinions aren’t in the same league as Joe’s either. Then comes the realization that simple popularity, basic social skills, a very little application, can result in a decent sized MySpace network that can be translated into a few bucks. The perception of immorality disappears.Putting the selling of our time, knowledge, and reputation into a personal context, as blogging has led many people to do, leads us to an individualized and personalized perspective on business and economics that is practical, transactional, and realistic. It is a step towards slaying, or perhaps dismantling the bogeyman of evil capitalism that has been stoked in the public imagination for decades. All but the most fervently idealogical will concede that it is not money but people who are immoral when confronting the issues on a personal level.May this emerging consciousness see sustained growth, enhancing individual comprehension of the transactional nature of human relationships and the utilitarian nature of money, and fostering a greater understanding of reputation and trust.Tags trust reputation blogging monetization [...]

First off, thanks for sharing the info on MeCommerce. Seems like a very interesting concept, one that I feel now tempted to play with on my blog.

As for Social Networks and shopping, here’s my two cents. I think Amazon has “not-so-quietly” been moving in to become a player to be reckoned with in the world of Social Networking and Shopping… they are missing on a handful of building blocks, but they are not far from it, in my opinion.

Thanks for the comment, Manny.

I feel strongly that social networks can lend themselves to a shopping based website. To speak to Phillips question above, I believe that you let the members upload deals as they see fit as this leads to deals stored on a site that the members actually care about. It also helps to further strengthen the sense of community, which is what will ultimately be the lifeblood of these type of sites.

My business partner, John, and I have developed a site that we believe will offer members a solid community experience and provide a practical shopping resource. We also have a few unique features that should add to our utility quotient. Check us out at http://www.dealarmy.com.

Tom

[...] bloggers that Steve Rubel posted about last night, the Goodstorm’s MeCommerce and others posted about by Mathew Ingram, as well as recommendation engine and other aggregation concepts, are [...]

I agree with Mecommerce, I really like it's features.

I agree with Mecommerce, I really like it's features.