Wishpot, the social bookmarking site that does universal wishlists and gift registries, is launching Wishpot Social Commerce, a new service allowing retailers and publishers to integrate Wishpot features directly into their websites. Wishpot Social Syndication for Product Feeds will enable retailers to merchandise their products on social networking sites, increasing the ROI of social media marketing [...]

Google has just launched a pre-beta version of Google Social Search that finds ratings, reviews and comments from people you personally know - specifically from people in your public social circle (respect, Google, social circle is a far better term than social graph/network).  It’s not linked up to stores yet, but you can see where this [...]

Referral (customer-get-customer) programs are probably nearly as old as word of mouth itself, but they are still the simplest and most effective solution to leveraging word of mouth – the most powerful marketing channel out there. As someone who has been involved with word of mouth marketing for years, what I find super interesting about referral [...]

Another sign of the mainstreaming of social commerce.  Magento, the popular open-source (with commercial option) ecommerce web platform (Nespresso, 3M, Samsung, Lenovo) has launched a Facebook Connect extension ($99) to enable social shopping – allowing people to get advice from people they know, rather than strangers. The guys over at Optaros Labs have posted this short [...]

With the number of social commerce software vendors multiplying, here’s an evolving directory of social commerce software and vendors. Know any more ? Comment below or use the contact form to send us details (name of software, vendor, and software function), and we’ll add it to the list. [table id=2 column_widths="30%|30%|40%" /]

Shopping can be a very social activity; in fact it’s the favorite social activity for teens.  So why does social shopping (co-browsing, wishlists, group-buying…) online have such a chequered history? Remember Smackshopping, Microsoft’s $50m social shopping venture (Deal of the Day Dutch Auctions)?  Deadpool.  Or Group Buy pioneer LetsBuyIt?  Deadpool. Enter Plurchase, a new social shopping site that [...]