So will 2010 be the year of “social commerce”, the year when social media marketing moves beyond echo-chamber hype and settles down to become a suite of productivity tools to help online buyers buy and online sellers sell? Well, social commerce has had some false dawns; Steve Rubel tipped 2006 to be the year of social [...]

Interesting post by David Armano over at Harvard Business Publishing, on six near term 2010 trends in social media (it’s that time of year again) 1. Social media begins to look less social (more emphasis on filtering out than connecting in) 2. Corporations look to scale (bigger initiatives – think Twelpforce) 3. Social business becomes [...]

Online private shopping clubs like Gilt and Vente-privée (directory here) are perhaps the most successful incarnations of social shopping. Whilst they don’t typically offer reviews, recommendations, registries or co-browsing, they are built on an eminently social invitation-only member-get-member mechanism that oils the word of mouth wheels. But how about integrating some more social shopping technologies?  The guys over [...]