So here’s a novel use of social commerce – as an alternative to a holding “under-construction” page whilst your site is being updated.

Apparel fashion retailer Uniqlo has been running a social commerce campaign – dubbed “lucky counter” whilst revamping its UK e-commerce website – based on user feedback.

The idea is simple; whilst the Uniqlo site is down, site visitors see a holding page where they can set the price for 10 Uniqlo items that will go on sale on the new website.  Users get to set the price by simply tweeting their favorite item – the more people who tweet, the lower the price (more than halving the initial price).

It’s fun way to promote your e-commerce web revamp, and of a similar vein to the paywithatweet service; you could almost forgive Uniqlo for using flash for the social commerce holding page…  The new site went live today, featuring the promotionally priced items (see last screenshot).

In the unlikely event you missed it, Apple launched Ping last week, a social network for music with a Facebook/Twitteresque activity stream, and that is deeply meshed into the ubiquitous iTunes store. 160m credit card accounts users can follow updates from friends and favorite music artists, access custom charts, news feeds, and 17,000+ concert listings all from within the iTunes store environment.

With Ping, Apple just reinvented social shopping. Sort of.

Ping has been heralded as the future of social commerce (and another death nail for the withering MySpace); a “social discovery” platform for music shopping, allowing users to make smart shopping decisions based on the preferences, opinions and activity of their friends – in a unified and seamless iTunes store experience.

Whilst Apple reports that a healthy 1/3 of iTunes 10 downloaders have joined Ping, potentially putting Ping on a trajectory to eclipse Twitter (45m) and probably making Ping already to big to fail (although Netflix’s version for movies (‘Friends’) did just that), the reality of Ping as a social platform is less than revolutionary.

Apart from teething problems (comment spam, Facebook Connect API, a dearth of bands to follow, poor personalised recommendations, virtual impossibility for bands/artists to set up a new profile, and a yet to be optimized UI), Ping offers users no more – and often many fewer – social features than other music-oriented social platforms, Pandora, Last.fm et al. And users are straight-jacketed into conversations around purchases – it’s definitely a shop-first-social-second experience.

But the shop-first-social-second weakness of Ping as a social platform is Ping’s strength as a shopping platform.  It is clear that Ping is set up to help Apple sell more music to more people more often; if it allows users to make smarter shopping decisions, using social intelligence and social graph, then so much the better.  Ping is all about conversion – not conversation.  We think it’s smart.  And why, our status as card-carrying Apple Fanboys notwithstanding, we think some of the gripes about Ping as a substandard social platform are missing the point.  iTunes Ping is an e-commerce optimization tool – a social network in a shop, not shop in a social network.

Our guess is that Ping will see a number of iterations – fast, as Apple experiment with the the embedded social network to boost conversion, order value, and customer value.  And then expect to see Apple roll out an optimized Ping to movies, TV, and books – integrating the Genius social recommender engine.

iTunes Ping.  This changes everything.  Again.

As requested, here’s today’s “Does My Butt Look Big in This?” presentation on emerging trends in social commerce – what works and why. Presented at the Social Media Summit – Wiesbaden August 31, 2010.  Click through to slideshare to download deck.

Bottom line (pun intended ) – the social commerce sweet-spot is where brands and retailers monetize their social media investment by helping shoppers use their social intelligence to make smart shopping decisions (i.e. ‘social learning’ from the experience and opinions of others… answering the perennial and profound question of “does my butt look big in this?”).  Enjoy.

The web is still digesting last week’s Gap social commerce promotion that generated $11m sales in one day. Hosted on the group buy Groupon platform, the “$25 for a $50 certificate” is one of the most successful social commerce events to date. Brilliant or barmy? Opinions are divided.

Here’s a summary of who’s saying what about the promotion that will allow social commerce agencies to adopt a new poster child for their cause – retiring the tired ”Dell sold 7m on Twitter” claim…

Mashable: Groupon Smashes Sales Records with Nationwide Gap Deal. 441,ooo Groupons sold on one day promotion on 19 August – about 5% of the total 9.4M Groupons ever sold…  The Gap promotion was also promoted on Twitter’s EarlyBird deal feed.  Augustine Fou, chief digital officer at Omnicom, is cited as commenting on the promotion is a prime example of “when NOT to use Groupon”. He commented, “Groupon is great for restaurants who have the margin to do it and who need publicity because people are not aware, but not for a big brand like Gap. It is simply a waste of money for them.”  The majority of comments beg to differ – pointing out that Groupon has not revealed the cut it took from the promotion, and retailers regularly run 50%+ off promotions, and many customers will spend more than $50.

TechCrunch: Groupon Launches National Deal With Gap, Selling 10 Groupons A Second.  First time Groupon platform (b. 11 November 2008) has been used for a nationwide deal (US) for a major brand. Article questions the ROI of the deal – Groupon is valid until November 19, 2010. In comments a useful link – http://groudashpon.heroku.com/ - from Dave Hoover to live Groupon sales activity.

ClickZ: How Gap’s ‘Groupon’ Went Crazy Viral: The success of the social commerce promotion wasn’t merely due to the lucrative discount offer. A marketing mix involving social media (Twitter Earlybird (180K+ followers) Twitter Gap (30K followers), Facebook Gap (606K “likers”) affiliates (Groupon’s 1,500 affiliates) and an ad on Digg supplemented Groupon’s e-mail program in the effort. Groupon spokesperson Julie Mossler challenged the well-reported idea that the huge response to the Gap deal caused Groupon’s system to crash. ”Our servers never actually crashed,” Mossler said.  More commentary on the viability of deep discounting and the risk of eroding brand value.

Chicago Tribune: Gap’s Groupon pulls in $11 million: Promotion so successful Groupon servers had problems keeping up with demand.  First ever nationwide deal and a departure from typical Groupon local deals.  Groupon recently introduced a feature called personalized deals to target subscribers based on their gender and ZIP code, enabling the site to offer multiple promotions each day. These deals will eventually be aimed at consumers based on their Groupon buying history, similar to how e-commerce companies such as Amazon use recommendation technology to predict shoppers’ preferences.

CenterNetworks: Groupon Teaches You Why Coupons Are Better Than Checkins For Deals: why do coupons work better for Groupon than they ever will for Foursquare? 1) the deals and coupons can be used by anyone, 2) there is no requirement to load software, 3) no privacy concerns <– this might be the biggest hurdle, 4) merchants see NEW foot-traffic into their stores, 5) deal and coupon sites can help make the coupon a success while pushing a local-checkin promo is a much harder sell to deal hunters.  Foursquare should stick to rewarding loyalty not generating additional footfall.

Here’s last week’s fantastic social commerce webinar/podcast on group buy hosted by Opus research/Internet2Go, featuring Yipit co-founder James Moran, Close.ly CEO Perry Evans and Internet2Go Senior Analyst & Program Director Greg Sterling.

Full of intelligent insights, useful stats and market predictions, it’s the best overview of the social commerce group-buy segment we’ve yet to have seen.

Here’s the link to the webinar (requires registration), but screenshots, audio and top takeouts are below.  Enjoy.

Group Buy Power Briefing (Yipit/Close.ly)

Top Takeouts

• 62% of online adults look for coupons for online stores – 12% never make a purchase without checking for an online coupon first
• Searches on Google for “Printable Coupons” increased 67% year on year
• Digital coupon users have average household income of $96K
• Adults with HH income greater than $100K are twice as likely to have redeemed online coupons than lower income households
• Adults with college degrees are 2x more likely to have used online coupons than those who didn’t graduate from high-school
• After search engines, coupon sites are the most popular online shopping tool (before reviews, retailer emails, price comparison sites, shopping portals and social networks)
• There are now 500+ Group Buy couponing sites; Groupon and LivingSocial are the market leaders (Groupon vital statistics: Valuation $1.35m, 2010 revenues (est.) $350-400M, $170M invested, present in 100+ US cities, expansion through Europe underway)
• Publishers/media co’s are now entering the group-buy arena (Washington Post, San Fransisco Chronicle, CBS)
• Group buy sites are a new generation local advertising channel/local direct marketing channel
• Group buy is form of “live social marketing” (daily deals + email marketing + mobile LBS/checking + Search marketing)
• 90% of group-buy coupons get redeemed
• The group-buy categories generating the most revenue are city tours, hair removal and spas
• The future of group buy is 1) “verticalization” – focusing on specific product/demographic categories 2) media (publishing sites)
• 93% of retailers using group buy sites would use them again
• Customer retention is an issue with group-buy sites – 19% conversion from coupons to regular customers – but apps such as Scoutmob are emerging that offer ‘return perks’ deals for returning coupon users to stimulate loyalty

Here’s yesterday’s PBS (WHRV – HearSay with Cathy Lewis) show on Groupon and the associated couponing trend (back on the rise in the US).

PBS Show on Groupon (50min)

The show includes the flurry of usual statistical suspects (below) and runs for nearly an hour, with listeners calling in (mostly to heart Groupon), but it makes good drive-time/commute listening – and demonstrates the appeal of Groupon from a shopper perspective.

• Groupon is the “fasting growing company ever” – growing faster than EBay, Yahoo, Facebook or Google grew – founded November 2008
• Only company to have been valued at more than a billion dollars faster the You Tube
• Groupon has a $1.3bn valuation
• You Tube has yet to turn a profit, but Groupon was in the black in its first 7 months
• On track for $500m revenue this year
• The recent Gap Groupon ($50 value for $25) sold 200,000 group coupons before noon (10/second)
• Groupon is part of revived trend of couponing (50% of Americans use coupons – up from last year)
• Consumers that clip grocery coupons spend more than non-coupon users
• Coupons may be for necessities, Groupons may be used for non-necessities luxuries
• Groupon will be soon be offering more targeted “personalized” offers based on zip codes

And to wrap up, a refresher on Groupon – what it is, how it works.

…And just for completeness, a Fox Business news slot from this week covering Groupon (You Tube link Fox doesn’t do embedding)…

A new private flash sales club site a (members-only online designer outlet store running time-limited deals) has just launched in the UK, Tagadas, a Vente Privée/Gilt for parents, selling hip baby/kids wear (similar sites in the US exist (theminisocial, zulily, btrendie, kids.woot)).

Tagadas (named after Tagada, the wondrous French strawberry candy) will run ”fabulous sales for smart parents” every three days, and is the latest example of a growing trend – member-get-member powered private flash sale clubs specializing in a specific vertical – other than usual suspect of designer fashion-ware for women.

• OneKingsLane –  Interior Design/Home Furnishings
• VoyagePrivé / Jetsetter / Vacationist / Bonvoyou / Tablet Private Sale - Travel
• KeyNoir – Lifestyle (city spas, hotels, restaurants)
• WineShopper / WineWoot – Wine
• Woot – Technology
• Kembrel – Students
• UrbanBloke – Mens (gadgets, grooming, accessories)

With e-commerce software now supporting flash sales (Magento, Moontoast), and insightful guides for implementing flash sales, we think we’ll be be seeing more of these private flash sale clubs focusing on specific verticals and specific demographics.  We also think private flash sale sites continue to represent a proven social commerce opportunity for brands (offering a VIP brand experience), retailers (online sales events) and startups (hosting private sales).

Is there a flash-sales vertical or demographic you could own?

So it’s the season of social commerce love – brands and social commerce platforms in all sorts of exotic combinations.

Hot on the heels of Gap’s promotional affair with Foursquare/Twitter/Facebook, the retail giant is getting it on with group-buy platform Groupon, where on August 19 you can/could buy a $50 voucher for $25.  We’re not sure if it plays nice with the above-mentioned extended ongoing 25% multi-platform promotion, but Gap is certainly playing the field in social commerce. Update – Mashable is reporting that the Gap promotion has broken all records on Groupon – by 5pm 300,000 Groupons had been sold – about 10/second.  That’s 3% of the total Groupons the fledgling social commerce platform has ever sold in it’s first 18 months…

And today, Target is hooking up with members-only private-shopping club Gilt (who had a recent summer affair with Starbucks), to launch its latest designer sale.  Members get early access to Target’s latest partnership with top designers (last year it was  Jean-Paul Gaultier, this year Gaby Basora (Tucker), John Derian and Mulberry.), offering catwalk and designer homeware labels at Main St prices. In return, Target will get extra word of mouth and editorial publicity – as the designer-ware talk zips through social networks…

Apart from the gossip value of these summertime trysts, what’s interesting from a social commerce perspective is that we’re seeing Groupon and Gilt emerging as mature social commerce platforms for big brands.  So set up your Facebook campaign tab/newsfeed store, set up your buywithatweet.com Twitter store, and then run a Groupon and Gilt event. You’ll have your 2010 social commerce bases covered.

Gap have extended their BlackMagic social media campaign exclusively for Foursquare users until August 22nd, extending last week’s one day Facebook-Twitter-Foursquare event promoting the launch of their new women’s black pants; 25% of all in-store purchases with a Facebook coupon (printed), Twitter code (spoken), or a Foursquare check-in (shown).

If checking-in on the geosocial network seems arduous, just give the cashier the register code BMAGIC25.

Gap is the latest retail brand to use Foursquare as a social commerce tool to drive traffic footfall and build loyalty in retail stores by rewarding people for checking-in to stores, and in so doing share store promotions across their social graphs.

With Facebook and Twitter launching geosocial features, dedicated loyalty apps like ShopKick, (used by Best Buy and Macy’s) WeReward and TopGuest often doing auto-check-ins, and Forrester advising marketers that it’s too early to jump on the geosocial marketing train anyway, the Foursquare minnow and its smaller siblings (Gowalla, Brightkite et al) are caught somewhere between a rock and a hard place.

Nevertheless, a number of brands are – or have been running Foursquare promotions – or “Specials” as Foursquare calls them.  Here’s a round up…

• 1. American Eagle Outfitters: Check-in to unlock a 15% discount
• 2. Ann Taylor: 25% off for mayors, check-in 5 times to unlock a 15% discount
• 3. Ben & Jerry’s: Free fourth scoop for mayors, check-in to get 3 scoops for $3
• 4. Coach: Free cologne for first 200 check-ins at new NY store
• 5. Chili’s: Free chips and salsa for check-ins
• 6. Crunch Fitness: Check-in for a free 7 day pass
• 7. Diesel: Free t-shirt for check-in (one day only)
• 8. Domino’s (UK): Free pizza every week for mayors, free side for check-ins
• 9. Gap: Check-in to unlock 25% discount
• 10. Golden Corral: Mayors eat free, one in five check-ins eat free, all check-ins entered into iPad sweepstake
• 11. Jimmy Choos (London, UK): Catch a checked-in “CatchaChoo” representative snapping Twitter photos of Jimmy Choos and get the shoes (Jimmy Choos Treasure Hunt)
• 12. Juicy Couture: Mayors get 30% VIP discount
• 13. Ligne Roset: 25% off for check-in (Togo collection)
• 14. North Shore Bank: $5 Subway giftcard for mayors
• 15. Pepsi: Check-in to Pepsi-pour locations, buy Pepsi and get Pepsi Loot reward points for free downloads
• 16. Pizza Hut: Free bread sticks for mayors
• 17. Radioshack: Mayors get 20% off, check-ins get 10% off
• 18. Sephora: First to check-in with Real Housewife badge to Sephora’s weekly “Secret Store” (revealed on Twitter) gets $100 voucher
• 19. Sports Authority: Mayors get  $10 instant Cash Card
• 20. Starbucks: $1 off Frappucino for mayors
• 21. Steve Madden: Check-in to receive a 20% discount $50+ purchases
• 22. Tasti D-Lite: Checkin to earn additional loyalty program reward points
• 23. Wagamama: Free juice for mayors, free miso soup for every fifth check-in
• 24. Wholefoods: Every fifth checkin get free scoop of gelato in store café

Scanning through these Foursquare promotions, it’s clear that Foursquare is being used primarily as a loyalty rewards platform/couponing channel offering four types of rewards or “Specials” for customers

• “Check-in Specials” – unlocked when a user checks in to a venue a certain number of times (“Foursquare says you’ve been here 10 times? That’s a free drink for you!”)
• “Mayor Specials” – unlocked only by the Mayor (the user who has checked in the most in last 60 days)(“Foursquare has deemed you the Mayor? Enjoy a free order of french fries!”)
• “Frequency-based Specials” – unlocked every X check-ins (“Foursquare users get 20% off any entree every 5th check-in!”)
• “Wildcard Specials” - unlocked with special conditions (“Show us your foursquare X badge and get a free drink!”)

Few retailers have published the results of their Foursquare campaigns – although pizza chain Domino’s attributed a 29% UK sales increase at least partly to its social media marketing campaigns.  Nevertheless, Forrester argue that adoption of geosocial apps is still too low to warrant marketing investment.

Sure, we not in Minority Report yet, but given that it’s free to run promotions on Foursquare, we’d recommend that brands and their agencies use Foursquare as an experimental sandbox for geosocial marketing.  The time for goesocial marketing will come, and when it does, it’ll be those with “the knowledge” who’ll profit.