New media, selling, social networks and 'social commerce'

Amazon, which can be considered as an example of collective intelligence (because of its book review system), can also be seen as a pioneer in the field of what is now called 'social commerce'.

As David Beisel points out in an article ('the beginnings of social commerce'), it indeed uses a way which consists in promoting products through friends' recommendations.

That is exactly what 'social commerce' is : a 'subset of “advertorial content,” where content is the advertising', and the important point is that it uses mostly the social networks (or at least on-line exchanges of comments, on-line rates) to promote products.

Indeed, as networking and social connections on the web have become more and more frequent, business companies have come to design a new system of commerce which is closely linked to these new on-line social interactions. This is one reason why the concept of 'social commerce' has started to be used.

Therefore, how can we describe it more precisely ?

The term was first use by David Beach (employee in Yahoo!) in 2005, but the concept was mainly developed by David Beisel and Steve Rubel.

The blogger Paul Masden lists different definitions which have been built, by many specialists.

His own one is a good summary of every one of them, defining 'social commerce' as 'a subset of electronic commerce that involves using social media, online media that supports social interaction and user contributions, to assist in the online buying and selling of products and services'.

Heidi Cohen lists several definitions of the concept too, and ads that it can be seen as 'the evolution and maturation of social media meets shopping'. 

She describes it as 'shopping-oriented social media marketing that touches buyers before, during and after their purchase. It encompasses a broad array of options including group buying, social shopping, mobile apps, retailers adding social features, and shopping integrated into social media'.

Moreover, it's interesting to notice that social commerce can be analyzed from a global scale, as Heidi Cohen does or David Berkowitz ('how marketers leverage social media to influence consumers’ shopping behavior, spanning product consideration, purchase intent, the transaction itself, and post-transaction advocacy and retention'). But also from an individual scale, when focused more on its individual aspects (best example with Julie Barile's definition, when she describes it as the 'act of consumers with similar interests, passions and needs collectively engaging in conversations related to products and services that satisfy those interests, passions and needs. Those conversations usually segue into several types of actions, such as recommending the products and services to more of their peers, and ultimately the purchase of those products and services').

But regardless the definition chosen, in other words 'social commerce' basically consists in the use of social network in the context of e-commerce transactions, mostly transmitted through means such as comments, posts, links, wall sharings, on-line rates (some studies though insist on distinguishing "social commerce" from "social shopping", referring to social commerce as 'collaborative networks of online vendors', and social shopping as 'collaborative activity of online shoppers').

Nowadays, Facebook is the most famous example of the use of social commerce, with its 'F commerce' (buying and selling products directly from facebook), but also with the users' comments on several products.

It is also the proof that social commerce is successful, especially in targeting specific public, specific groups of consumers.

Facebook's advertising policy is changing all the time, but it has always been in advantage to companies. In a certain way, it has always been designed to improve, and encourage, social commerce.

Dealing with another really famous network, Twitter  use social commerce too (not as much as Facebook though). Companies indeed use Twitter to promote some sales and new products, through the users' posts, or by creating their own account.

Yet Twitter and Facebook are not the only sites which resort to social commerce : Groupon, Polyvore, LivingSocial, ShopSocially, StuffBuff, Cafepress, Lockerz or Kactoos, also use it a lot.

Therefore, companies often involve association with the most famous networking sites to develop social commerce. And the tendency is increasing.

Thus, sometimes even without noticing it, networks users help companies promote themselves. For users it's a common thing, not a big involvment, but for the companies it has deeper effects, especially leading to giant advertising results (so at the same time benefits), without spending that much money.

But apart from that, we can guess that these are the first steps to a completely different way of shopping on-line for consumers, and at the same time a new way of advertising for companies.

Social networks offer for that grand possibilities, which are not used entirely yet.

New media users experience a new way of shopping (based on specific critera, shared opinions, other poeple's advice), share it on a large scale and everybody take advantage from it (both consomuners/users and advertisers).

Social commerce has consequently changed marketing, leading to new advertisement strategies, but also new media users shopping habits, and even maybe human interactions.

And as these practices of social commerce grow in popularity, among people but above all among companies marketing professionals, both new media and commerce are changing.