Buy Side E Commerce

English: Wordle Cloud Definition of Social Commerce - All Definitions of "Social Commerce" added to http://www.wordle.net from http://socialcommercetoday.com/social-commerce-definition-word-cloud-definitive-definition-list/ (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

S-Commerce and the Social Hub Wave

Until recently, e-commerce was the new topic anyplace. E-commerce began the new way to buy - online - as against traditional offline commerce. Web 1.0 started with that. Soon after, the now omnipresent Web 2.0 dawned on us, as more users came online and interactions began to happen. Natural progression in technology made it possible for everyone involved to use videos and high-broadband syndication techniques. It is, today, hard to imagine, a web without blogging. Forum participation caught on fire. Youtube is omnipresent today.

Web 2.0 is changing again, for the better. Blogging is giving way to micro-blogging as an easier path to convey information. Twitter led the way and still to-date continues to. It has become really easy for anyone to share their thoughts, news, opinions, reviews, opinions and agreements to other people's thoughts and views, and to share links of what they like and what they do not like, all in a 140 character snippet. "Viral" marketing truly caught on fire. And alongside that, the true meaning of "Social" began taking shape with social networks. Facebook has enabled users to interact with people they know, trust and wish to become friends with, with ease, sophistication and in style. Social Media Marketing and Social Networking have become synonymous with Facebook. Facebook, with its 600 plus million user community, has taken the world by storm, sufficient to say that Facebook would be one of the top most populous places, if it were a country. Facebook could well be a country on its own and a bank too with its social currency! Today, people live, sleep and wake-up with Facebook and social has become the new standard.

The e-world is on the move again, in the right direction. The wonderful world of e-commerce and the awesomely addictive world of social networking are coming together. E-commerce and Social Networking are joining forces and the result is fascinating. Welcome to Social Commerce! A variety of names and paths - S-Commerce, Social Market, Social Hub, Social Shopping, Scommerce, Social E-commerce, Social Ecommerce, Social Marketplace - all of them lead to exactly the same destination - Social Commerce.

Wikipedia calls Social Commerce as the "Use of social media via social interaction and user contributions to assist in the online buying and selling of products and services". So, what is this and why is it useful? Simply put, people trust other people than products, brands or companies. When people hear good or bad things about anything, whether a product or a service, and the more they hear about it in a particular direction (good or bad), they naturally incline to the decision that the product or service is as-such, without having to try the same themselves. This does make perfect sense and is applicable for our everyday life. Needless to say, feedback, recommendations and reviews are worth more than any other imaginable description of what's being offered. In the space of electronic commerce, with its difficulties around buying or selling products or services remotely, where one cannot touch and feel the offering prior to purchase, particularly will benefit from social interactions and user contributions in a manner that is beyond words. One can finally buy a product or service knowing and trusting what other users say, as opposed to just believing in the vendor advertisement on the product. This is cool, is it not!!


The world of Social Commerce applies just as equally to services as it does to products. On the product side, Social Shopping is becoming the way to go. With services, Social Marketplace is gaining traction as the way to seek and fulfill services. Social Commerce has seen over $2 billion in investments in the first quarter of 2011 alone. This is the new way of business. Social Commerce - the way forward it is.

About the Author

Ghigg (http://www.ghigg.com) is a Social Commerce Platform for Firm Fixed Price Services. The Ghigg Social Hub enables S-Commerce and Social Outsourcing by empowering businesses to Give, Get and Gain.


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