What does it mean to have a social shopping experience? The definitions run the gamut, depending on the type of shopping experience you’re looking for. But Wanelo is pioneering an interesting model to look at.
New York-based social commerce site Fancy said Monday that it will roll out a program to compensate users for their curation and sharing. Each time a friend buys a product shared by a user, the user will get 2 percent of the transaction value.
Snapette, which launched last August with a sort of Pinterest for the real world model, is now becoming more of a resource for local merchants and brands, who can use the mobile app and its new website to alert users to products they might like.
Last night I had dinner with a gang of former Jupiter Research analysts. We all worked with Foursquare’s Dennis Crowley when he was but a lowly Research Associate. We had mixed opinions on Foursquare’s prospects, and, reading Ryan Kim’s piece on Banjo this morning spurred me to frame the situation facing check-in and discovery app mass-adoption. According to our GigaOM Pro 1Q12 online consumer survey, only 6 percent of online adults use a location-based check-in service regularly. Dedicated entertainment check-in and discovery apps have even lower single-digit adoption. Compare those with daily deals, which are about the same age as Foursquare and are used regularly by 30 percent of online U.S. adults, and actually cashed in by 19 percent. It feels like check-in has not cracked Om’s magic combination of enchantment and utility. Will well-targeted offers or entertainment recommendations change that equation?
Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten confirms today that it lead a $100 million financing round for Pinterest, the image-oriented social curation site. The investment values Pinterest at $1. 5 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal, which is half a billion more than Facebook paid for Instagram just a couple weeks ago. Together, that’s $2.5 billion for a pair of companies that don’t have a single business model between them. In an interview with the Financial Times, however, Rakuten CEO Hiroshi Mikitani made it clear he sees in Pinterest an opportunity to create a new model of social-discovery driven e-commerce. Your move, Amazon.
Pinterest-like discovery site Fancy rolled out a new social commerce platform in February, letting brands and retailers sign up to be a seller on any item that’s been fancied on the site. That has helped Fancy double its user base to 500,000 users.
Social networks like Twitter and Facebook have helped to raise awareness of content online, and made it easier for videos to go viral and be seen by the masses. But betting only on social might not be the best strategy for apps focused on video discovery.
Desktop video player Mixd.tv wants to help its users to discover the best clips on the web, but it doesn’t query Facebook or Twitter to do so. The team behind Mixd.tv believes that social is overrated, and instead puts its emphasis on more traditional branded channels.
Social discovery platform StumbleUpon says it’s cutting back on the ability of users to blog and customize their profiles on the site. That includes shutting down groups, photo blogging, and the ability to select themes, which are all going away as of Oct. 24.
Facebook has been talking to various music services with a focus on social sharing and discovery of music. In this exclusive report, we share some of Facebook’s plans and features. Expect these announcements at its annual developer conference, likely to be held in August.
