In a blogspotting article by Business Week, the results of a social commerce study on myYearbook were revealed.
This study revolved around the interaction of social media and e-commerce, which has yet to reach its full potential and gain widespread traction (though some notable exceptions exist, including Zappos and Dell).
A few things become clear when reading the results
A overwhelming percentage of respondents (83%) have not posted information about a purchase they’re planning to make on their profile or in a status message in order to gather their friends opinions.
People are more likely to ask about “Small ticket” items such as movie tickets, music recommendations and video games instead of “large ticket” items, such as vacation destinations, new homes, or appliances.
We believe that the payoff for consumer adoption of social shopping can have huge impacts to bottom-line revenues, even for small ticket items in the short-term.
Adoption
As you can see, the majority of social network users have not vetted purchase decisions with their online friends. But of the 17%, or more than 5,700 who have, their responses are surprising:
* 81% received advice from their friends and followers
* 74% of those who received advice were influenced by it
That is a huge statistic. To translate these percentages into real numbers, out of the 30,000+ people polled, just over 4,000 were influenced by advice received from their personal network about a potential purchase decision.
E-Commerce companies and retailers may still be figuring our how to integrate their platforms with social media tools to socialize the buying cycle, but the potential is there, and the payoff could be huge.
After speaking with Geoff Merrick about our newest product, Ripple6 OnDemand, I decided to get a few words from our CEO, Sang Kim.
This short (1:38) video explains a bit about how we’ve used our experience working with enterprise-level clients to develop a product which is not only powerful and scalable, but easy to implement.
In an apparent first, a social network www.MixingBowl.com has launched a print publication – Mixing Bowl Magazine. The magazine is a special edition from Better Homes and Gardens Special Interest Publications and appears on US newsstands until August 25, 2009.
Mixing Bowl is a social cookbook, created by the makers of Better Homes and Gardens, and full of 100% User Generated Content. Better Homes and Gardens maintains an active presence on the site, but keeps their triple-tested recipes, which appear in the regular edition of their publication, separate from their social network – one which is truly a ‘social cookbook’.
Users have certainly stepped up to the plate (the dinner plate) and dished up some great numbers! According to Compete.com, MixingBowl.com served over 2.1 million page views in July, spanning 200,000 unique visitors and over 40,000 members. Mixers have created 17,300 recipes and 500+ public groups since the sites launch earlier this year.
This is an example of a thriving online community being created and growing based upon an affinity for food. Is a paper spin-off of a successful online site the future of magazines? Perhaps, especially considering that a second edition of the magazine is slated for January, 2010.
What we do know today is that BH&G and the Mixing Bowl crew are doing something right. The site is growing quickly and people are finding what they want there.
NOTE: In Dec 2007 Dennis Publishing in the UK printed a Facebook “bookazine” which was a single printing. It wasn’t intended to be a magazine. Mixing Bowl Magazine’s future is yet to be decided but it is definitely the first social website to print it’s own magazine as an offline companion to the online site.
My job as the Ripple6 Marketing Manager keeps me busy talking with many of our different departments. I caught up with our VP of Professional Services, Geoff Merrick, yesterday afternoon to talk a bit about our new product offering, Ripple6 OnDemand.
Geoff and his team are responsible for the development and implementation of our products and this short video explains a bit about our new product from a technical perspective.
Full-Featured Platform Offers New Revenue Opportunities, Fast Implementation, and Scalability for Publishers
NEW YORK – August 19, 2009 – Ripple6, a leading provider of social media services to brand marketers and publishers, today announced Ripple6 OnDemand, a turnkey social networking platform that offers easy implementation, scalability, and new monetization opportunities. With Ripple6 OnDemand, publishers can connect with their audiences and generate incremental revenue by helping brands tap into the power of social networking and community building in a fast, efficient, and cost-effective manner.
Ripple6 OnDemand offers a full-featured social networking platform that helps publishers unlock the value of their audience and create new revenue streams beyond banner ads and subscription models. The product enables a publisher to create a customized, content-ready site in as little as 24 hours. Content integration is simple, using standard web interfaces; design templates can be easily customized around branding guidelines.
Ripple6 OnDemand’s proprietary features include Brand Communities™, Social Insights™ and Ripple Analytics™. Brand Communities help marketers connect with consumers and start conversations in a social community environment outside of ads. Major national brands currently using this solution include P&G, Unilever, Walgreens and Benjamin Moore. With Social Insights, publishers can use primary custom research as a means to monetize their audience. Both solutions include Ripple Analytics, which delivers social metrics to help publishers better understand and demonstrate audience value to potential advertisers.
“Ripple6 OnDemand packages our feature-rich social media platform in a low-investment turnkey solution with powerful revenue generating opportunities for publishers,” said Sang Kim, CEO at Ripple6. “Using Ripple6 OnDemand is a unique opportunity for publishers to realize incremental income and positive ROI by enhancing the value of their audience without negatively impacting current ad revenue.”
To help publishers get started, Ripple6 offers Smart Start, a program created to leverage Ripple6 social media expertise and gather insights from real users in a live environment in order to design a successful community. The program includes the creation of a community and a one-month research project. Smart Start allows publishers to avoid costly redesigns by developing a blueprint for the social network based on user experience and feedback.
Ripple6™ helps marketers, publishers and e-tailers implement their business strategy through social media. The company provides an enterprise white label social media platform to create consumer engagements and relationships, enhance social marketing, generate consumer insights, and facilitate commerce and collaboration. It is easily customized to incorporate a brand’s look and feel for integration into an existing web site or to create an entirely new site. Ripple6, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE: GCI), is based in New York and its list of clients and partners includes P&G, Meredith Corporation, and Unilever. For more information, go to www.Ripple6.com.
In an apparent first, a social network www.MixingBowl.com has launched a print publication – Mixing Bowl Magazine. The magazine is a special edition from Better Homes and Gardens Special Interest Publications and appears on US newsstands until August 25, 2009.
