Handy Social Elements
The new rules of social commerce.The social
media phenomenon is transforming the way
companies connect with and make money from
customers. It’s a disruptive process.
Gavin Michael
Facebook’s IPO and subsequent stock market
performance continues to be widely reported. What
attracted less coverage was that it dropped Facebook
Credits in favor of local currency pricing -- a vital step
towards offering full-service payment functionality
online. A clearer signpost to the reality of “social sales”
-- financial transactions taking place within a social
site -- is hard to imagine.
Most companies’ early efforts with social have been
the equivalent of “brochureware” (just as they were on
the internet back in the 1990s). And although levels of
sophistication are growing -- Dell’s (DELL) $6 millionplus in sales via Twitter, for example -- most social
commerce experiments have a long way to go. All
too often, when shoppers on a retailer’s social pages
are ready to buy, they’re sent elsewher RF