Social Commerce: The End Of The Beginning
Adrian got me thinking about the fall of deals a la Groupon and Living Social:
Adrian Chan, End of daily deals, or are social deals still ahead?
As Mashable reports, daily deals may be at the end of an era.
The daily deal space was bound to contract. Retailers and marketers know that deals do not loyal customers make. And their novelty has worn off for both customers and retailers.
But most interestingly, deals offered by Groupon and even Facebook failed to become social. Groupon hasn’t yet tried to socialize its deals — using sharing models to enhance deals and galvanize distribution, for example. Facebook, in spite of being ideally positioned, still has difficulty un-intrusively blending commerce with its users’ social networking activities.
The promise of socialized deal distribution, benefiting customers (and their friends), as well as retailers, still stands. And deserves closer examination. Mobile commerce, for example, is nigh upon us. Payment systems should soon provide a boost to both mobile and social networking commerce. And social networking services will inevitably get smarter about what their users (and friends) are interested in.
Years ago, I started theorizing about social commerce, particularly with regard to recommendations by trusted sources. If you are planning a trip to Hawaii, wouldn’t you like recommendations about lodging, activities, and restaurants by trusted sources? I went so far as to make a pronouncement:
In the future, all commerce will be socialized.
I still envision a future where social curation is integral to social commerce, and some interesting starts have been made, but as sometimes is the case, the future in question was farther off than I might have thought. I think we haven’t yet moved over the threshold I had envisioned. We are perhaps at the end of the beginning of the social revolution, and the next stage is around the corner, linked to the rise of social operating systems, genius mobile devices, and ubiquitous connectivity. That will be the platform where the revolution will really explode.
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