A month ago there was press release on social commerce business by Amazon and Facebook.
Like Zynga’s social game, Amazon may use Facebook’s open API and they can offer some items to customers or strengthen shopping reviews.
It’s rather easy to anticipate the effect of social commerce. Because social commerce is relied on human network, customers can buy products optimized their needs via some mtehods such as DB marketing. And they would buy more products by friend’s recommendation or automatic product offerings which is differentiated with the traditional spam advertisement.
But how to run social commerce? It’s a difficult question. Some players have tried social commerce but it’s not that successful. In case of 11st which ranks as the 2nd online open market service provider in Korea, they have provided chapping(chatting+shopping) which enables customers discussing over the products. But many users don’t know the service exactly. Frankly, many customers don’t need that kind of service. It’s difficult how to apply social commerce to an original business.
Groupon seems as a representative case of social commerce. It gives a big price-discount on a group purchase. But it sticks to a quick-returns policy. They don’t have any weak tie or something. Just a temporary grouping for a low price. Maybe a micro-blog or a LBS-connected blogging servce may be more advantageous to expand business using their users’ social network. For example, if 4 square.com add a few function such as coupon, discount informtion, even mobile payment, they can find a new business opportunity from the connection between mobile SNS and offline stores.