Funnily enough, I’d just finished reading a piece about social shopping by David Cushman when I checked the top five viral videos for last week (from viralvideochart). In at number five, behind Barack Obama’s ‘A more perfect union’, and Boston Dynamics very cool Big Dog, was the flipside of the social shopping concept – this promotional video for product sourcing company SaleHoo.
I’m not going to go into whether or not it’s a good company etc, but I do think it’s interesting anyone is increasingly becoming able to go to product suppliers, and essentially become a reseller of a product, giving it a human element. It’s another revenue stream, alongside affiliate deals, or the traditional reselling of ISPs and Domains that many net geeks have been doing for years.
It also reveals how reputation and ratings will become increasingly important throughout the web. In a formal shopping setting like Ebay, you can see a formal rating (reliability is always an issue), but on a forum, or an unfamiliar blog it’s a bit harder – unless you’ve got the time and energy to research anyone making a recommendation.
So is the answer an open, consistent ID across the net which allows for some type of commerce rating? Or joining a dedicated shopping network, like Ebay? Or what about Stylehive or This Next, which aim to provide the tools for social shopping?
Or how about all the people that you’ve already connected with and trust?
Hence the power of a social network. If I’m able to ask the good friends that I’ve hung out with, got drunk with, and shared my life with already – then I won’t be relying solely on ratings or guesswork…