Interesting post by Leo Chen over at TechCrunch making three predictions about how the Rakuten-backed Pinterest will profit from social commerce.

1. Branded pages for brands, stores and boutiques (competing directly with Facebook Pages)
2. Integrated/Universal checkout (see it on Pinterest, buy it on Pinterest (drop shopping solution))
3. Shopping channel on Pinterest (shop.pinterest.com) – product focused, stripped of all the puppies

It’s an interesting and viable vision (read a business model not based on advertising revenue), although we’re not sure the future of Pinterest is an Amazon-style marketplace.

Instead we’d envisage the social commerce future of Pinterest as a hub for themed flash sales and deals – of both the local (a la Amazon Local) and national (a la Gilt/One Kings Lane) variety.

Think a visual version of Yipit/MyNines done right (EveryLodge for fashion/home).

1. Flash Sales: Online and national retailers post up their deals onto special Pinterest themed pinboards e.g. sales.pinterest/home – users filter/get feeds based on preferences
2. Local Deals: Local retailers post up their deals onto city pinboards that can be filtered by category and brand e.g. local.pinterest/home

We think this kind of event-based social commerce represents a more viable future for Pinterest than an Amazon-style marketplace solution because events are inherently more talkable – i.e. shareable, allowing Pinterest to monetize the virality of the platform.

It’d also make Pinterest attractive as a target for Amazon – to consolidate its position in the local deals market, and turbocharge the e-commerce giant in the flash sales arena?

So, which would you rather see, Pinterest with ads or Pinterest with shopping?

And if it’s shopping – what flavour of shopping – Amazon-style marketplace or a flash sale events?

Today, Facebook commerce platform provider Payvment will launch its own version of Facebook Ads specifically designed to take the guesswork out of running Facebook ad campaigns.

Rather than rely on Facebook’s social graph data alone, the Payvment version will pull from over 2 years worth of data accrued from its 165,000 merchant stores and 40 million Facebook users who have interacted with Payvment’s shopping cart system. It then uses that data to predict which types of users are likely to be interested in the seller’s products.

Here are a few key points:

• The service is integrated into the company’s standard promotions tool; when sellers create a promotional post, they can now opt to reach beyond their fan base via a Facebook Ad.
• The seller simply edits the headline and body of the post, selects their budget (which generates an estimated reach for the ad), then clicks “promote” to launch the ad.
• Payvment automatically targets the ads for sellers by mapping their inventory and past shopper engagement patterns to data from 40M+ Facebook users who’ve interacted with Payvment.

A recent Payvment survey revealed that more than 60% of its sellers have yet to try Facebook Ads, with 25% saying its use is just too complicated. Of those who had tried them but weren’t satisfied, two-thirds cited low click-through rate or poor targeting as reasons not to use Facebook Ads again.

Payvment CEO, Christian Taylor, said that its version removes the need for the trial and error approach typically associated with running Facebook ad campaigns. There must be something to it, too, because initial tests of the service have shown up to a 25% increase in click-through rates over standard self-serve Facebook Ads, according to Taylor.

At Syzygy (London/Frankfurt-based digital agency), we’ve just released a free open source WordPress theme for ‘pay-with-a-share’ social commerce called POPSHOP.

You can grab it, and see working demos over at getpopshop.com.

POPSHOP is a free one-page WordPress theme that adds a temporary ‘pop-up shop’ page to your website or Facebook Page, allowing you to sell digital content or a product sample for the price of a social share.

Inspired by the award-winning “Pay-with-a-Tweet“, we thought it’s be cool if there was a simple self-hosted solution for this kind of social commerce – with more features;

• More ‘social payment’ options; – Pay with a Pin, Pay with a Google +1, pay with a LinkedIn Share etc.
• More kinds of product that you can ‘sell’ – physical product samples and streamed video content.
• Works on your Facebook Page as well as your website

So we built POPSHOP, a kind of Pay-with-Tweet on steroids.

It’s designed to make it easy for artists, agencies, businesses and brands to self-manage simple but effective pop-up ‘pay-with-a-share campaigns’ on websites and Facebook Pages.

It’s free and open-source, our contribution to the social commerce world.  Enjoy and let us know what you think!

Here are some of POPSHOP’s key features;

• Single-page simplicity; POPSHOP creates a single page shop for to you to run pay-with-share campaigns
• Facebook integrated; designed to look amazing as a Page Tab on your Facebook Page
• Sell digital products for a social share; simply upload your digital content for sharing via the POPSHOP setup menu
• Sell streaming video for a social share; embed hidden YouTube videos and give access for the price of a social share
• Sell physical products for a social share; take orders for physical samples
• Flexible share-locker; choose among the five major share buttons – Facebook Like, Pinterest Pin, Twitter Tweet,LinkedIn Share and Google+1
• Alternative contact-gate; prefer to capture leads than generate shares? POPSHOP has you covered!
• Custom contact form builder; collect the shipping and lead information you need
• Additional Showcase Mode if you don’t want to sell, but simply showcase your latest release and drive traffic to a chosen URL
• Intuitive Setup Wizard; step by step guidance for setting up and running your pop-up shop
• Fullscreen custom background; for maximum visual impact
• Touch-enabled image slider to showcase your product
• Integrated Stats Dashboard to track traffic, shares, orders and virality
• Integrated Order Management for taking orders and collecting leads
• Google Analytics field
• Custom CSS field for complete control over appearance
• Completely free and open-source - join us on GitHub

About Syzygy:

Syzygy is a digital agency based in London, Frankfurt and Bad Homburg that works collaboratively with businesses and brands to develop strategic, creative and technical ideas that help them grow their businesses and deliver value to their customers.

With over 15 years’ experience developing everything from award-winning Web content, platforms and mobile campaigns to social media, search strategies and CGI motion animation, Syzygy believes it always comes back to the ideas. Ideas that are easy to find, easy to like and easy to share. Clients include: Kraft, Reckitt Benckiser, Avis, DeBeers, GSK, Mazda, BNP Paribas.

If you’re interested in SYZYGY running a fully managed custom pay-with-a-share social commerce campaign for you, do get in touch!

A recent study from ad agency Leo Burnett and its digital arm ARC Worldwide reveals new data on what the social customer really wants from his or her shopping experience.

Specifically, the study, entitled SocialShop, identifies six shopper archtypes:

• Savvy Passionista – These people are social trendsetter and influence other’s shopping behavior. They stay in the know and express their opinions to others via social networks.
• Opportunistic Adventurer – She is your impulse shopper always on the hunt for great deals. The folks at Groupon love her because looks for the unexpected.
• Quality Devotee – It’s all about finding the best product available, and this shopper will spare no time or expense to achieve that goal.
• Strategic Saver – This person is a comparison shopper and will dig for deals.
• Efficient Sprinter – Saving time is the modus operandi for this shopper. As long as social media assists in that way, he will use it.
• Dollar Defaulter - This shopper has a single quest: find the cheapest deals around. Brand loyalty is not a factor where she is concerned.

Leo Burnett suggest several ways brands can appeal to the buying behaviors of each of these archetypes:

• Help consumers discover and connect, and use a variety of social networks in the process.
• Invest to “to good to pass up” deals on daily deal sites and through geo-location mobile apps such as Shopkick.
• Help shoppers build knowledge by providing online ratings and reviews, blogs, forums and YouTube.
• Provide a curated list of top selling products on the brand website and within social media.
• Broadcast special deals on retailer websites.

What drives each of these six types of social shoppers says Leo Burnett? Indulgence (Savvy Passionista), Impluse (Opportunistic Adventurer), Information (Quality Devotee, Strategic Saver), and Utility (Efficient Sprinter, Dollar Defaulter). The better brands are at appealing to each of these drivers, the more meaningful their social media engagement efforts will be.

Understanding how and why people shop using social media is key to maximizing its value from a commerce perspective. It’s the same idea SCT Editor Paul Marsden fostered in 2009 with his post on social psychology - How Social Commerce Works: The Social Psychology of Social Shopping - and is worth a quick review.

What did one social plugin company say to another?  You’re mine for $151m.  Bazaarvoice, market leader in social plugins for e-commerce sites has announced it is acquiring PowerReviews, #2 social plugin company for e-commerce sites.

Another riddle. How did one social commerce software company go from niche to mainstream and on track for increasing its customer base 10 fold?  8thBridge started selling social plugins for e-commerce sites rather than trying to reinvent e-commerce.

Selling social plugins for e-commerce (and increasingly in-store retail as well) seems to be the secret to social commerce success.  And not a revolution in sight (or on site).

For those versed in the peculiar area of “qwertynomics“, of how vested interests and structures lock-in incumbent solutions even if better ones exist (like the qwerty keyboard, invented to slow typists down by being as unpractical as possible to avoid mechanical arms colliding), the rise of the social plugin should come as no surprise.

Social plugins are incremental rather than disruptive innovation – and thus don’t come up against the wall of vested interests.  More radical revolutionary e-commerce solutions might possibly be better on paper, and even in practice, but we’ve a lot invested in the past. You’ve spent time money and effort on your existing e-commerce solution – so you need a new one like you need a bullet in your head.

Sure, social plugins for e-commerce are perhaps not as sexy as the revolutionary hutzpah of startups on a mission to radically reinvent e-commerce.  But they work, they deliver increased traffic, conversion and additional order value.  And they are psychologically smart too – they allow shoppers to shop smarter with their social intelligence.  Simple but smart – the future of social commerce may be the social plugin.

As Sir Isaac Newton once said, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants” – in the world of social commerce, commerce is the giant upon whose shoulder social must stand. Why?  Because that’s where the money lies.  And after all, it’s all about the money, the rest is just conversation,

Toronto-based incubator MaRS – a hub for entrepreneurs, scientists and capital – has produced a useful state of the market report on social commerce.

The report, authored by industry analyst Neha Khera, can be accessed here, but here’s the skinny.

• “Overall, the social commerce market, while yet to provide significant measurable returns, is undoubtedly poised for growth, since all the players in its value chain are aligned. Consumers are drawn to social applications that make their commerce activity more informed and engaging. Retailers are realizing the enormous upside of social recommendations in promoting their products. Entrepreneurs are innovating rapidly to develop unique experiences that combine “social” with shopping. And investors are betting on this market as being the next big thing―when an Amazon finally meets a Facebook”.

• Social commerce is about collaborative shopping experiences that result from the fusion of e-commerce  (a $7 trillion market) and social networking technology (adopted by 20% of the planet)
• More formally, social commerce involves the use of social networks―whether it be interactions amongst friends or strangers―to drive commerce, including the exchange of money, knowledge, goods or services
• In plain English social commerce is about meshing shopping with socializing helping people socialize where they shop, or shop where they socialize – it is about integrating a social experience into the buying process
• Social commerce is a $1bn market (US), currently representing just 0.5% of the overall $200bn US e-commerce market, which in turn represents just 7% of the total commerce (consumer) market (US figures)
• The social commerce market is expected to grow to $15bn by 2015.  VC firm Greylock Partners, believes social commerce has the potential to transform what was a previously stagnant e-commerce market saddled with high customer-acquisition costs, low customer retention, and cash-consuming business models. The potential for social commerce is to create addictive and compelling experiences created whilst reducing customer-acquisition costs via word-of-mouth
• The value proposition of social commerce for consumers is that it offers a more personalized, informative and engaging shopping experience.
• The value proposition of social commerce for retailers is that by integrating social media into the buying process they can drive sales either online or in-store.
• Additional benefits of social commerce include

• Social commerce helps retailers drive product awareness
• Social commerce helps levels the competitive field, by small retailers access to larger audiences – without huge advertising or outlet costs
• Social commerce democratizes commerce, by giving the power back to the shopper by giving them an online voice
• Social commerce humanizes commerce, by refocusing commerce on personal exchanges
• Social commerce is sustainable commerce, peer to peer marketplaces allow people to rent, swap or borrow items – giving life to products that would otherwise be thrown out;  for every garbage can of waste we produce, seventy additional cans of waste have been produced upstream.

• Shopping where you socialize

• 1. Facebook Stores
• 2. Fan Pages (offers and discounts)
• 3. Facebook Credits

• 4. Co-browsing
• 5. Digital couponing [SCT note - we're not so sure why this counts as social commerce]
• 6. Group Buying
• 7. Local Commerce [SCT note - idem. we're not so sure why this counts as social commerce]
• 8. Open Graph
• 9. Peer to Peer Marketplaces
• 10. Ratings and Reviews
• 11. Social Curation

Today’s article is sponsored by Milyoni: The Leader in Social Entertainment