Hi Mark, thanks for this thoughtful comment, and I whole-heartedly agree. I\'d see this service primarily as a viral digital \"tryvertising\"/\"sampling\" platform - to be used in much the same way as described by C Anderson in his Freemium model...

Thanks Sam, I\'ll check out what\'s new at Shoply!

Hi Paul, thanks for the comment, much appreciated... Been trying to track down the source of the quote - a number of independent sources tweeted it at about the same time - on Aug 26th tweets in total - haven't tracked down where the Zuc was... Will continue to sleuth...
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22if+I+had+to+g...

Sure, go ahead Tegan. Best, Paul

Thanks Jeff, another smart comment. Think the social media consultant line is not to take back control of the conversation - you can\'t - but join the conversation. But do customers want to converse with brands... this HBR article suggests not. However, when brands host conversations - i.e. facilitate them with social media tools (forums, Q&A, reviews, plugins etc), we see that they are used - and customers buy more. So, all I\'m suggesting is that brands should think of themselves as hosts, curators and facilitators of customer-customer talk - rather than seek to join the conversation.

gurus\'

Hi Alvin - Visa promise the video will be back up in the next day or so.

Hi Mark, thanks for the comment - we agree the market is fast becoming saturated. Our guess is that we'll see a) more niche group-buy sites emerge for specialist interest communities, including B2B sites for group procurement, b) a consolidation of players, and c) magazines/newspapers adopt them as a way to monetize their readerships - like a new generation of classified ads.

But as you warn, maintaining high quality deals will be key for traction...

"Social commerce models are ecommerce models that focus on people instead of products".

Love it - eloquently put, and worth quoting - can I add it to our directory of definitions?
http://socialcommercetoday.com/social-commerce-de...

Get where you are coming from - there is no "need" as you put it to label any use of social media in the context of e-commerce as social commerce - you could restrict it to a number of other definitions - for example, the only academic publication on social commerce suggests that social commerce is restricted to

"Social commerce is an emerging trend in which sellers are connected in online social networks, and where sellers are individuals instead of firms"

I assume you disagree with this as well. So my point is, it all depends on definitions you use - the AMA defines marketing as

"Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large".

You'll notice that this includes selling. So social media marketing can be said to include social commerce - but from the above, I suspect you disagree with this as well.

Wikipedia defines e-commerce: electronic commerce, commonly known as e-commerce or eCommerce, or e-business consists of the buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks.

That bit is at least is clear ;-) But you'll see the logic of the updated definition of social commerce; the choice of language has been taken to be consistent with definition of e-commerce.

But we wouldn't want to take credit for Wikipedia definition of social commerce, it's the result of a content analysis of 20 definitions used. The previous suggested definition needed correcting because it wasn't written in English (you have to have at the forefront of something); grammatically incorrect and substantively vague - not too useful for organizing a debate about.

But *this* is useful debate - to understand something, you have to understand what it is not. I suspect we are closer in our opinions than it may seem. And for us, as long as people define the terms they use, then there is room for various understandings and usage of a term. We're Wittgenstein-ian like that ;-).

One problem, in our view, with some social media marketing, social commerce and "social" in general - is that terms are used as woolly non-specific terms to hide woolly, loose thinking in favor of marketing hype and spin.

I think that is something we can both agree on!

Thanks Alex, good point - social commerce as a constant dialogue with customers and between customers is a nice alternative customer-focused definition. Not sure, we'd want to exclude the other techniques for selling with social media though.