The Psychology of Soldsie’s Comment Commerce: Why the $1M Cash Injection Makes Sense

So Soldsie, the crowdfunded (FundersClub) f-commerce startup just announced that is has raised $1m in funding.  Participating in the round were 500 Startups, e.ventures and FundersClub, along with former Facebook employees Yun-Fang Juan and Jonathan Ehrlich and others.

Given all the negative publicity around f-commerce on Facebook (contrasting starkly with all the positive publicity around f-commerce on websites),one might be tempted to think that Soldie is on the ‘Payvment’ to, well, dead-pooled Payvment.  But we think not.  Why?  Because Soldsie’s ‘comment commerce’ is simple, builds on popular native Facebook functionality and uses smart psychology.

Soldie’s comment commerce works like this; if you have something to sell you post a pic to Facebook, and users simply post a comment ‘Sold’ to receive a purchase link.

Psychologically, this is smart – using the powerful social influence ‘consistency’ technique (foot-in-the-door) to move people onto the purchase journey.  It costs nothing to say ‘SOLD’, but psychologically, to avoid cognitive dissonance, people will be more likely to go-ahead with the purchase once they’ve made a seemingly trivial but public commitment. Soldsie is psychologically smart social commerce.

In reality, the Soldsie experience is not quite as frictionless as it ideally could be; both parties have to install the Soldsie Facebook app for it to work, which includes a ‘Soldsie can post on your behalf request…’  And to sell, it appears you have to have a Facebook Page, which rules out a lot of P2P commerce from individuals looking to sell stuff on their Facebook Page rather than eBay.

But Soldsie way simpler than the Amex Twitter Commerce solution, and in our view, the idea of ‘Comment Commerce’ has legs beyond FB (Soldsie, Chirpify talk to each other).  So we’re ‘SOLD’ on Soldsie.