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.

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.

So P&G are developing quite a taste for f-commerce – selling on Facebook.  In the UK, with their Amazon-powered Facebook store for the makeup of makeup artists brand Max Factor, and in the US, now a Facebook Campaign Store to support and capitalize (literally) on their heavily promoted and much talked about Old Spice Man campaign.

From the Facebook storefront, Old Spice aficionados – yes they now exist – can buy branded merchandise from the Super-Bowl-to-Real-Time-Social-Media ‘Old Spice Man’ campaign featuring shirtless baritone and ex-NFL player Isaiah Mustafa, replete with washboard ads and comedic timing.

As with the UK store, P&G has outsourced all the heavy lifting with the Old Spice Man Campaign Store – the Facebook store is simply a storefront linking through to an external e-store managed by a e-commerce partner in Massachusetts that looks after fulfillment and customer service.

So one of our predictions we make when speaking about the future of social commerce is no longer a prediction – the emergence of Facebook campaign stores to support and monetize marketing campaigns – pop-up f-stores – see the ad; engage with the promotion; buy the merchandise.  The P&G Campaign store is elementary, and no doubt could be improved, but all the elements are there.  And it’s there. Welcome to the world of Facebook Campaign Stores.

Why do we think pop-up (temporary) Facebook Campaign Stores are the future of f-commerce?  They’re quick, cheap and easy to set up, they help monetize campaigns, and ultimately, because they may help solve the century-plus old problem encapsulated in the famous quote of disputed origin) origin “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half”.

Whilst much advertising, including the digital variety, is and should be focused on building lifetime customer value (AKA ‘Brand building) rather than producing sales bumps, any integrated campaign that creates a digital trace between advertising and buyer behavior can only be a good thing.

So if you manage a brand, why not take a leaf from the book of the biggest advertiser in the world, and throw up a Facebook store for your next campaign?  And if you are an agency, why not consider teaming up with the burgeoning number of f-commerce solution providers out there and start proposing campaigns with real ROI?

You’ve got to hand it to Starbucks, they’re the world’s most liked brand, in Facebook-world that is.

After pioneering social commerce-powered loyalty programs on Facebook, using Foursquare to offer discounts for mayoral checkins, learning from Dell to create a customer-powered idea blog, and running promoted tweet campaigns on Twitter, Starbucks have now hooked up with the social commerce leader in private sales, Gilt.com in the US to offer their loyalty card holders early access to their new limited-edition luxury San Cristóbal ‘Special Reserve’ Starbucks coffee from the Gálapagos islands.

It works like this – if you’re one of the 1m+ Starbucks loyalty card members (MyStarbucksRewards), you’ll have received a special email invitation offering VIP early access to a private sale of the new, yet-to-be-launched ultra-premium San Cristóbal coffee on Gilt, a day before Gilt members get access, and weeks before anyone else.  And you get to exercise your bragging rights with the ubiquitous Facebook like button on Gilt.

What we like, or rather love and heart, about Starbucks’ latest social commerce initiative is it builds the brand, reinforcing the brand’s ability to discover and source some of the world’s exotic, rare and exquisite coffees and bring both the flavors and the experience to life for customers – especially it’s best customers.

It’s also smart social commerce in that that doesn’t erode margins – offering early access rather than price discounts to brand fans and followers. Furthermore, the initiative is designed to boost loyalty, rather than effect a short-term promotional sale bump – and in true Flip-the-Funnel fashion – is likely to stimulate advocacy whilst building customer lifetime value.

Additionally, it’s a very efficient social commerce initiative, leveraging an existing social commerce platform – the member-get-member powered Gilt.com – rather than seeking to build it’s own.  And by choosing a social commerce platform designed for luxury brands – the luxury credentials of San Cristóbal are reinforced. We don’t know much this cost Starbucks – but given that loyalty card members have to join Gilt to access the VIP event, it’s quite possible it cost the brand nothing at all.

And finally, it’s a very successful social commerce initiative – Gilt sold out of San Cristóbal coffee before most Gilt customers could get access to the Private Sale; Starbucks loyalty customers snapped everything up.

We think this is a smart approach to doing smart social commerce – and one other brands, particularly upscale or luxury brands would do well to consider – and possibly emulate.  How could you launch a product linking Facebook with a Private-Sales platform?

Kudos Starbucks, Kudos.

So did hell just freeze over? Amazon, the grand dame of e-commerce has set up shop with the new kid on the e-commerce block, Facebook, in a curious ménage-à-trois with leading consumer brand manufacturer, Procter & Gamble (photographic evidence below).

What’s actually being sold is P&G’s Max Factor brand, “the makeup of makeup artists”, on a shop tab on the brand’s UK Facebook page. Product pages and shopping cart are in Facebook, whilst the checkout takes place on Amazon.co.uk.

At first glance, this is all quite mad – Amazon surely wants to keep e-commerce to itself, and not invite the unruly social network muscle in on what has been its show for over a decade. P&G wants to irritate traditional retailers – its customers – by selling direct, like it wants a bullet in the head. And Facebook should have no interest in having a hole blasted through the wall of its walled garden to let money flow out, just when it’s investing so heavily in it’s own virtual currency, Facebook Credits, to keep money in.

And yet, it’s genius.

We think this Facebook + Amazon + Brand trinity is a really smart low-risk-high-reward solution for businesses and brands to explore f-commerce, without all those pesky problems of logistics and fulfillment.  And if your products are already for sale on Amazon – then it’s a real no-brainer (and even if they’re not – with Amazon storefront and logistics offered as a turnkey service – it’s still pretty much a no-brainer).  The big advantage is that you can brand the e-commerce experience, keeping people within your Facebook page all the way from conversation to commerce, and then just hand over all the heavy lifting to Amazon.  It’s e-commerce without tears.

It’s a win-win for all involved. Shoppers get the convenience of shopping for their favorite brands within Facebook – linking seamlessly through from brand updates to their walls, getting to use all the social features – chat, likes etc, they know and love, whilst also getting the security of having transactions handled by the most respected name in the field.

For Amazon, it allows the e-commerce behemoth, once considered by some to be a laggard in social commerce, to spread it’s global wings over the largest platform on the Web – social or otherwise – and become the fulfillment partner for all things f-commerce. On the back of Amazon’s recent purchase of social shopping site Woot, any suspicion that Amazon may have missed the boat when it comes to social commerce can be laid to rest.

For Facebook, it allows the world’s favorite website to “stand on giant’s shoulders” (Amazon’s) and instantly become a respected social commerce platform.  Combined with third party providers offering custom storefronts, and the imminent expansion of Facebook Credits facilities, f-commerce is beginning to shape up into a formidable player.

And for P&G – it’s an oh-so-smart – and safe – solution to learn about e-commerce, Direct to Consumer relationships, and most importantly about its brand users.  The vast majority of P&G’s products are already sold on Amazon – so any political risk of upsetting traditional retail customers by opening a new retail channel is mitigated.

When run in tandem with ‘Facebook specials‘ – a term we think we’ll hear a whole lot more for special offers, exclusive deals etc – the Facebook + Amazon + Brand ménage-à-trois becomes a compelling proposition.

And let’s not forget digital agencies – whilst a ménage-à-quatre might be a little crowded, we think there will be a real opportunity for digital agencies to bring brands, Amazon and Facebook together and offer turn-key solutions that fuse the three together.

The social commerce world just got more interesting.

Head over to paywithatweet.com, and you’ll find an intriguing new social commerce model – where you can buy digital goods (music, software, ebooks, videos etc) and pay for them simply by tweeting them. It works like this; you simply click on the ‘Pay with a Tweet’ button, are asked to login to Twitter (or Facebook), edit the proposed tweet/wall message – and click the download button – whilst your message is syndicated across your social graph. Simple.

Pay with a Tweet is billed as a ‘social payments system’ designed to create viral buzz for content creators and marketers alike who want to promote themselves, their brand, product or service.

It’s an interesting model, and one that is set up and run out of Hamburg/New York by the creative duo at Innovative Thunder (@innothunder) - Leif Abraham and Christian Behrendt, of BestBuy’s much lauded Twitter-based Twelpforce fame (Pay with a Tweet app developer is John Tubert).

To launch the service, French electro pop band ‘The Teenagers‘ (breakthrough track “Homecoming” – a French tongue-in-cheek take on American sexuality), have released their new single “Made of” from their upcoming album exclusively with Pay with a Tweet (video below of the band wooing tweets).

And if electropop is not your thing - you can buy Innovative Thunder’s ebook on digital business for a Tweet (16,000 downloads on the first day).

The logic behind Pay with a Tweet is compelling; the same logic that has spawned a successful sub-industry in PR where editors, reviewers, celebrities and journalists are sent swag bags for free in return for (hopefully) positive words. Sometimes word of mouth – particularly at product launch – is worth more that the product itself.

Pay with a Tweet is free and simple to use; vendors create a Pay with a Tweet button using a simple form on the app’s site, entering their Twitter account, desired message to be re-tweeted, and the link to a digital download. Then just copy and paste the button code to the web, push the button – and let viral tweeting take over.

Pay with a Tweet is barebones, and feels like a beta version of something much bigger – we think this or a similar social payments model could evolve in to a powerful word of mouth marketing platform for brands, bands and content producers.  For example, Pay with a Tweet could be used to download not only promotional content, but also links/codes/coupons to exclusive promotions/previews/or even live events such as fashion shows.

Similarly, by auto-embedding the Pay with a Tweet buy button in a Google/Facebook ad – you could create a truly viral promotion. Another option would be to flip the process, so people do pay for digital downloads,  but are then reimbursed for a Wall/Twitter review that reaches x number of people.  (A simple mechanism could be added to the platform so if the review is negative it gets shuttled privately back to the sponsoring brand for ‘insight’ rather than shouted out on Twitter).  Likewise, by teaming up with a sampling company – Pay with a Tweet could offer a viral sampling service; Tweet and get the sample delivered to your door.

As Pay With a Tweet evolves, we think it’ll have to be beefed up to host digital downloads (with virus scanning) onsite, offer a decent analytics dashboard, and propose a premium paid-for service (perhaps where the promoted tweet can’t be edited so tweets go out ‘on-brand’).  Expect a Facebook ‘Pay with a Like’ service to appear soon (the service already uses the retired but not quite dead yet Facebook Connect).

In the meantime, Innovative Thunder suggest their fledgling social payments platform can be used by;

• DJ’s: Sell your latest mix for a Tweet to promote your next show or just to bring more people to your website.
• Other music artists: Sell your new single or music video for a Tweet in order to promote your new album or tour.
• Journalists and Publishers: Sell your leading article for a Tweet to promote your magazine, newspaper or charged online service.
• Authors: Sell a teaser version of your book with a Tweet to boost your sales.
• Consumer Brands: Sell your latest commercial for a Tweet and make it go viral.
• Creatives: Sell the access to your portfolio for a Tweet and increase your degree of popularity.
• Business Professionals and Scientists: Sell your master thesis, study, paper or presentation for a Tweet and increase your popularity in your special field.
• Service Provider: Sell a basic version of your service for a Tweet and bring more people to your website where they can learn about the benefits of your charged premium service.
• Film Directors and Entertainment Companies: Sell the trailer for your upcoming movie for a Tweet and maximize the viral momentum of your marketing campaign.

We like.

The Teenagers Promoting their ‘Buy with a Tweet’ Track on YouTube

Here’s our new presentation deck presented at an agency event last week, “Social Commerce | Beyond Transactions“. It’s a short deck on emerging trends in social commerce, with a focus on moving beyond transactions and towards relationships. There are two embedded videos, also posted below incase the SlideShare embed function is not working.  The deck can be downloaded at SlideShare.

Feedback and discussion welcome!

Brands covered include Starbucks, Levi’s Diesel, Apple, P&G, Disney, Kenmore, Domino’s.

Here’s our latest presentation on social commerce – focusing on the key opportunities for brands, with recent examples from Apple, Diesel, Disney, P&G, Dell, Starbucks and others.  The deck can be downloaded by clicking through to slideshare.  Feedback welcome!

We’ve had a number of requests for a downloadable presentation on the social psychology of social shopping and the six social cues shoppers use to thinslice information and decide what to buy.

So here is is: The presentation is based on an earlier article in Social Commerce Today (useful for anyone who wants details on the six psychological principles), and has updated examples. View here and click through to SlideShare to download.

Barely a week since launch, 50,000+ sites are already using Facebook’s new ‘Open Graph’ social plugins to offer visitors social features they are accustomed to in Facebook; the social plugin for the already ubiquitous Like button alone generated 1,000,000,000 impressions within 24 hours of debuting, and it may be set to play an important role in the evolution of Web 3.0 – the semantic web.

For social commerce, the opportunities are clear - brands and retailers can now add Facebook social features, social context and social relevancy to e-commerce sites with no more than a single line of code; new markup tags register a product pages as unique objects in Facebook, pulling them into, and allowing them to profit from the Facebook ecosystem. As a bonus, sites deploying Open Graph social plugins get to use Facebook’s powerful Insights metrics tools.

In a nutshell, with Open Graph, what happens in Facebook, doesn’t stay in Facebook. No longer confined to storefronts within Facebook, f-commerce is will be coming to a site near you.  Open Graph is f-commerce unleashed.

Of course, some of the functionality offered by Open Graph social plugins and the associated API and SDK isn’t entirely new; it has or rather had been available with Facebook Connect (which has now been retired), but implementation required coding-ninja skills in XFBML and FQL.  In contrast, the new social plugins offer a more-or-less one-click solution for deploying compelling personalized social shopping experiences.

1. Like Button:  Provides shoppers with a social context to online shopping, showing them which of their friends like a product or site (see ItsTrending.com as an early use of this for aggregating likes or recommendations (the ‘like’ label on the button can be relabeled as ‘recommend’), and lets them share pages from your site back to their Facebook profile with one click.

2. Activity Feed: Allows shoppers to see a filtered view of their News Feed relevant to your site – i.e. your News Feed and the likes and comments of their friends

3. Recommendations Plugin:  Offers shoppers suggestions for things they might like – a collaborative filtering algorithm based on the collective mutual interests of shoppers on the site, as well as from the shopper’s personal friends.

4. Like Box Plugin: Allows shoppers to see your Facebook stream directly on your website

5. Facepile Plugin: Provides a social context to shopping by showing shoppers the profile pictures of the their friends who have already signed up for your site.

6. Login Button with Faces Plugin: (Replaces Facebook Connect Login Button): Provides a social context to shopping by showing shoppers the profile pictures of the their friends who have already signed up for your site.

7. Comments Plugin:  Allows shoppers to comment on products and deals on your site

8. Live Stream Plugin: Allows shoppers to shop together, sharing activity and comments in real-time on your site

9. Social Bar Plugin (coming soon): Adds an all-in-one social shopping toolbar (not dissimilar of DecisionStep Meebo social bars) to a site that includes the Like button, friends who like the site, and Facebook Chat

10. Facebook Credits: Not a social plugin per se, but Facebook is ramping up it’s virtual currency ‘Credits’ by offering them as a payout option for online loyalty/referral rewards programs through is App2User program, as well as making purchasing credits easier.

To illustrate the potential of Open Graph, Facebook has showcased three companies already using it to offer personalized socially-enhanced experiences on their sites; Yelp, Pandora and Microsoft.  Whilst these examples do not pertain specifically to social commerce,  a little lateral thinking reveals how they might be used to offer compelling social shopping experiences.

Yelp: When you now visit the ratings and reviews site, you see a notification that the content is already being personalized for you based on your social graph (with opportunity to opt out).  In practice, what this means you see a ‘Friend’s Activity’ link in the top let hand corner, giving you access to ratings, reviews and comments made by your friends, two photo-bars of friends – those using the site, and those currently on the site, and the FBLike buttons next to search results that you can send to your news feed.  Social Commerce Opportunity: Levi’s Style Social Shopping.

Pandora: When you now access the Internet radio site, you’ll see – like Yelp – a notification that the content is already being personalized for you based on your social graph.  What this means in practice is that there is a new feature on the interface, called Friends’ Music, which you allows you to explore the radio stations and tracks liked by your Facebook friends.  For a FB immigrant as opposed to a FB native, it still feels spookily intimate to ruffle through friends personal music (Séverine – Fedde Le Grand, really?). Pandora will also let you know visually when you’re listening to a track or artist favorited by a friend, and if you like a track on FB, Pandora will play a recommendation based on this, when you next log on. Social Commerce Opportunity: Social Wishlists, Giftlists, Picklists and Popularity Lists; Personalized Shopping Recommendations.

Microsoft: As with Yelp and Pandora, you see a notification at the top of the page that new Microsoft Docs.com site (in private beta) and would-be Google Docs challenger, is personalizing your experience.  In plain English, what this means is that you can share docs with some or all of your FB contacts, publish docs to your FB Wall (allowing others can comment on it), and browse shared documents of your FB friends on the site. Social Commerce Opportunity: What if the Document was a Coupon?  Deal Sharing.  Or a call to arms to organize a Tuangou (team buying event)?

Of course, using Facebook as a social commerce solution provider is not devoid of risks as competitor DecisionStep has pointed out; and joining your site at the hips with the whims of Mark Zuckerburg could be something of a roller-coaster ride.  Nevertheless, Facebook’s Open Graph is a game-changer in social commerce, and the social commerce world has just got a lot more exciting.