If anyone thought that the flirtation between Groupon and national retail chains (Gap, The Body Shop) was but a temporary tryst, two new deals point to a more enduring romance, as the group-buy social commerce platform evolves to remain competitive with Facebook Place Deals. Yesterday, fashion retailer American Apparel began a three-day Groupon deal, with just 100 shoppers [...]
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 [...]
The most excellent trends and innovation site PSFK, widely used by agencies for creative stimulus, has just published it’s latest Future of Retail report (embedded below), outlining 10 big trends in retail. Trend number 9, Instant Show & Tell: Friendly advice exchanged in real time covers, in addition to Diesel’s Facebook powered store cam and [...]
Apple’s iTunes store for movies has integrated Rotten Tomatoes reviews, Flixter’s popular reviews aggregator of professional and audience reviews, displaying a ‘Tomatometer’ popularity gauge next to movies (article on Mashable). This is a smart use of the authority social influence cue. How could your brand combine professional ratings and reviews with those from customers? Apple
Techcrunch is reporting that Apple is to integrate Facebook Connect with iTunes (article archived below). Facebook Connect is the portable social graph tool from Facebook that enables easy login, ‘friendsourcing’ of advice and ‘friendcasting’ purchases and recommendations to and from social networks. From initially giving it the cold shoulder, Apple has warmed significantly to social media marketing, [...]
Whilst Easter Apple-talk is focused on the iPad launch (US) tomorrow, Apple has just launched its f-commerce (Facebook e-commerce) store on Facebook (screenshot below) – selling apps for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. Unlike its big iTunes brother the f-commerce store includes social features such as discuss and share. Whilst it’s basic f-commerce only [...]
