Grounded In Reality

I’ve been reading a lot lately about social shopping.  What is it?  It’s basically the marriage of shopping and social networking, and it’s getting a big lift from mobile, IM and other emerging digital media technologies.

For teens, in particular, shopping has always been a social activity, and now they have plenty of channels to connect online.  Online communities are popping up right and left that let teens recommend and discover products, build and share shopping lists, create profiles, post photos, tag great finds and more.  Here are some of my favorites:

Kaboodle - You can collect information from anywhere on the Web, put it into a Kaboodle list that you can share with others, and discover other interesting lists from like-minded “Kaboodlers.”  You can also invite friends to help you research, plan and decide what to buy.  I’ve been looking for a new bag, and I like the Lilu Deerie Me Tote recommended by acceptnosubstitute87.  Kaboodle also has a cool poll feature called “Help Me Choose.”

ThisNext - I really like the layout and functionality of ThisNext, which spans a broader audience than just teens.  It’s described as a shopcasting network where you can recommend, share and discover great products.  Users create “shopcast lists” of products that are tagged and searchable on the site.  Shopcasts can be about activities (like travel or cooking) or things (like fashion or food) or lifestyle.  This month’s focus is, “It’s so easy being green.”  I found a great shopcast on “Green Goodies for the Design Set,” including an Edible Indoor Miniature Garden and Recycled Wrapper Wastebasket.

Stylehive - The Stylehive is a global, social bookmarking community focused entirely on products and shopping.  The site follows the latest trends, designers and fashions, and describes itself as a “community that is reshaping the world of retail, design and fashion by changing how we shop.”  More than other social shopping sites, many users are looking to make a name for themselves and gain influence in the fashion world.

Other sites to check out:

• Crowdstorm
• Hawkee
• StyleFeeder
• ShopWiki
• Etsy - for all things handmade
• FiveLimes - for sustainable, local, healthy shopping
• DealBundle
• MyPickList
• GoPowWow
• DesiresIn
• Wists

Personally, I see the value in online social shopping.  I love new stuff, but I really don’t like shopping in the traditional sense.  Malls make me crazy.  I’d rather have someone I trust show me the coolest new thing and where I can get it - quickly and easy.

There’s also a lot of opportunity for marketers in these communities, but at this point, only a handful have jumped on board.  A few companies are advertising on these sites, and some online retailers have formed affiliate relationships, paying a percentage for sales generated.  It would be cool to see a company more intimately involved in the community, either through starting a group, offering their own shopping/product experts or otherwise enhancing the user experience.  Companies should also start identifying the influencers in these communities and engaging them in product design and marketing efforts.

It’ll be interesting to follow these sites this holiday shopping season.

Leo Laporte’s move to Jaiku from Twitter caused both the crash of the Jaiku server (he has more than 4,000 followers, a greater following than Robert Scoble), and put Jaiku on the nanoblogging map.  (I have not heard of Twitter prior to SXSW Interactive 2007, and only heard about Jaiku on TWiT when Leo made the move.)

I’ve been checking out both services, and my initial recommendation is Twitter over Jaiku.  Though I think Jaiku has some very nifty functionalities (it invokes Apple’s userability while Twitter reminds me of a functional PC), I find that for now Jaiku:

• - Lacks instant message (IM) integration / alerts;
• - For the U.S. audience, it is likely to have inconvenient down times since it is based in Helsinki; 
• - Certain American carriers are blocking Jaiku SMS alerts, a bug that the company is working through;
• - Though offering cool Growler and Quicksilver scripts for Mac users is applicable only to a niche Apple market

For my U.S.-centric clients, I would have to recommend Twitter, for now.  That said, the market is young and it is too risky to predict the future of either service—and that of emerging competitors.

I naturally assumed (as did TechCrunch) that this would be a push by MySpace to target a new demographic…but in reality, it is a boost for one of their most popular advertising groups — films. 

SearchEngineJournal says:

A study was published yesterday by Pali Research analyst Richard Greenfield estimating that MySpace is now generating over $30 million per month in advertising revenue.

Recently, MySpace has taken advantage of movie promotions to increase (from 10 to 300) the number of photos one can store to their personal page, based on sponorship from the film 300.  Following the increase of photos was the ability to create albums (and later removed) that was sponsored by a movie (maybe X-men).  At this very moment, the photos are being sposored by ‘The Transformers: Transform your photos’…which I assumed would be an editing feature, but its not.

I digress from photos, back to video.  

I think this is a wise move by MySpace (Fox) to take advantage of the large amount of interest they receive from the film business to show trailers on log-in pages and in the ‘Featured Movie’ columns at the ‘Home’ view.  MySpace TrailerPark feels like a mashup of YouTube and MySpace SecretShows page and a real trailer park.  I do think it is nice for MySpace to finally provide you with the coding to embed the video or image (rather than having to find one yourself).

However, I have yet to see a video on the page because every attempt shows a very sad, crying face, similar to this one.   Not to mention my personal problems with MySpace…(the accusation that my account has been phished, and the lack of ability to prove that I am me, in order to unlock it)

MySpace is also dabbling in politics…

Mary Madden published a fascinating report for Pew Internet & American Life Project on “Social Media and Libraries.” What struck me the most is the portrait of today’s “wired” teen.

Consider the life of the teenager born in 1990 - the year that Tim Berners-Lee wrote the World Wide Web program and the PC was 15 years old:

- First Grade - Palm Pilot hit the market
- Fourth Grade - Sean Fanning created Napster
- Middle School - Wikipedia, iPods and Skype are introduced (can you imagine having Wikipedia in middle school?)
- High School - Podcasts, YouTube and MySpace arrive on the scene

Today’s teen grew up in a truly wired world, and they don’t know anything different. They get their information from many different non-traditional sources, and marketers must be comfortable with these channels to engage them in a relevant way. For example, the same report finds that more than half (55%) of online American youth ages 12-17 use online social networking sites. We’re talking to several clients right now about the right way to have a presence there.