Conference Title: The Rise of Social Commerce Presented by Altimeter Date: October 6th and 7th Location: Four Seasons, Palo Alto, CA Theme: The push for customer advocacy. Reinvent your brand through the Rise of Social Commerce Delegate Fee: $2000 (+ $400 for pre-conference workshop) Conference Link http://www.riseofsocialcommerce.com/ Conference Overview: Reinvent your brand.  Learn about social [...]

Here’s a short paper from the latest McKinsey Quarterly on how businesses can use social networks effectively to promote their products and services (direct download here).  Bottom line, treat social networks as enablers and amplifiers of word of mouth, which can only be truly ignited by delivering real and authentic value to users. Sure, the [...]

Interesting post today over at econsultancy by Matt Owen speculating on the future of Facebook as a “one stop internet shop”, as it continues to grow, moving, seemingly inexorably, towards the big 1bn user milestone. Matt suggests that commercial value of Facebook lies not so much in its massive user base but the depth and [...]

Yesterday, Amazon set about acquiring the Texas-based “one-deal-a-day” real-time social shopping phenomenon with added attitude Woot! “Selling Cool Stuff Cheap”, Woot is a community-first group-buy site, a digital version of TV shopping that promotes interaction among shoppers, and offers various shopping channels – shirt.woot, kids.woot, wine.woot etc and a deal aggregator deals.woot (vital statistics, b. 2004, [...]

In the battle for global dominance in the group-buy space, social commerce player Groupon has been snapping up local clones around the world. Now, number two US player LivingSocial (85m users, $44m funding) has just launched its international expansion, opening up shop in London, UK – with a group-buy deal at celebrity chef restaurants – Marco Pierre White. Interview with [...]

With group buying moving mainstream – with on the one hand popular purveyors of local deals such as Groupon and LivingSocial, and on the other, private flash-sale clubs, such as Gilt and Ideeli - we’re seeing the emergence of a new breed of group-buy sites focusing on narrow “verticals” – i.e. niche categories. One such start-up [...]

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 [...]

Here’s an interesting Forbes video with Chris Sacca, ex-Google backer of Twitter, Gowalla and Swipely on the future of social networking and social commerce… Top takeout People will do more real stuff with social nets…. Making online surfing and shopping more social – linking the stuff you do and watch online to your social networks, [...]

Here’s a short interview (7 mins) just published of the ever-insightful Mitch Joel, author of Six Pixels of Separation, on social commerce and social media ROI (Mitch also recently presented at the Bazaarvoice 2010 social commerce conference).  Interviewed by Mark Smiciklas of Canadian agency DIG360 at this month’s STORE2010 conference in Toronto.  Top takeouts below. Top Takeouts: The focus [...]

Yesterday, social commerce site Vinobest (a French group-buy wine merchant) launched a flash sale application on Facebook built by award-winning Facebook marketing agency Tigerlily. Vinobest is a vente-privée.com/ Gilt.com for wine, offering expert oenologist opinion and sommelier selections for group-buy deals on wine.  Unlike many other private sale sites Vinobest offers active pricing – the more people who [...]